Weho, Los Angeles
Ashley Bickerton
Wall-Wall
Thibault & SunderThibault & Sunder is pleased to present Wall-Wall, a solo exhibition by seminal contemporary artist Ashley Bickerton. Wall-Wall marks Ashley Bickerton’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles since 1987. Ashley Bickerton rose to prominence in the early 1980s as part of New York’s East Village art scene with his vibrant abstract works that commonly offered a sardonic critique of contemporary consumer culture. Alongside Jeff Koons, Meyer Vaisman, and Peter Halley, the artist pioneered the ‘Neo-Geo’ movement, thus helping to permanently change the course of contemporary art history. After twelve years spent in New York City, Bickerton began a long journey in the 1990s that eventually brought him to the island of Bali, where he lives and works today. Wall-Wall brings together recent iterations from Bickerton’s longstanding Wall-Wall series, a series that the artist has been developing since the 1980s. Highly-produced and technically involved, pieces from the Wall-Wall series take the appearance of common architectural accents in which flagstones are laid flat in mortar to embellish a facade or interior surface. This specific architectural detail was a frequent addition to what became known as the mid-century architecture style ‘Googie’. Influenced by the space age, car culture, nuclear power, and embodied post-war optimism, the Googie architectural aesthetic has a particular renown and profile in Los Angeles, as Bickerton witnessed while attending Calarts before moving to New York. Bickerton’s Wall-Wall series often incorporate loud and otherworldly colors and forms layered on sleek, unforgiving surfaces. As jarring as they are seductive, the Wall-Wall works appear aesthetically lesioned; colored-resin cast rocks that erupt like raw blisters, glossy and wet. As Bickerton himself says about the Wall-Wall series: "I want to make sluttier, smaller, ingratiating, colour-soaked sexual work that just panders to the viewer." Pieces from the Wall-Wall series seem to be relics from a parallel universe where psychedelia, capitalism, and animated futurism exist as a single concept. Ashley Bickerton’s themes, visible from the artist’s early career, have continued to find renewed relevance over the last four decades. Bickerton’s mirroring of cultural excess, notions of anthropological preservation, use of corporate identity, and unique production techniques are just a few examples of how he remains a vital figure to multiple generations of artists, young and old. Purposefully difficult to date - and even more difficult to compare - Bickerton’s work stems from his beautifully articulated invented universe, inspiring artists such as Matthew Barney, the YBAs, and many others. Ashley Bickerton (b. 1959, Barbados, West Indies) graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 and continued his education in the Independent Studies Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Selected exhibitions include Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, United Kingdom; Tate St Ives, Cornwall, United Kingdom; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Spruth Magers, Berlin, Germany; Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY; New Museum, New York, NY; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Serpentine Galleries, London, United Kingdom; Nordic Arts Centre, Helsinki, Finland; Kunstverein, Hannover, Germany; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL. Ashley Bickerton’s first retrospective Ornamental Hysteria opens April 21, 2017 at London’s at Newport Street Gallery. The artist lives and works in Bali, Indonesia.