Gagosian’s Artist Spotlight to Feature New Sculpture by Ashley Bickerton

NEW YORK, October 21, 2022—As part of Artist Spotlight—an online series that focuses on an individual artist for one week each month—Gagosian is pleased to present a new sculpture by #ashleybickerton. The featured work will be revealed at gagosian.com on October 28 and will be available exclusively online for forty-eight hours.

Kara Vander Weg, senior director of Gagosian, commented, "Ashley has been forthcoming about the fact that he was diagnosed with ALS over a year ago. And despite the incredible challenges that come with the disease, he has remained focused on making and exhibiting his art. We are proud to present his sculpture as part of our Artist Spotlight series. Proceeds from the sale will be contributed to the ALS Association global research and advocacy fund."

Originally identified with the Neo-Geo tendency that emerged in late-1980s New York, Bickerton made his name with ironic, abstracted constructions focused on ideas of consumerism, identity, and value. After he relocated from the East Village of New York City to the Indonesian island of Bali in 1993, his work took a self-consciously "exotic" turn, with a tongue-in-cheek feel and ornate look. Over the past few years, Bickerton has brought his practice full circle, employing the elaborate framing devices of his earlier output to recontextualize objects such as ocean-borne waste and marine gear.

Artist Spotlight: #ashleybickerton features a just-completed work in Bickerton's Ocean Chunk series. Conceived during the glacial New York winter of 1992, shortly before the artist's permanent departure from the city, the wall-mounted Ocean Chunk sculptures transport the viewer to a different clime. These translucent blue resin blocks, seemingly embedded with bathymetric formations of sand, rock, and coral, recall displays from a natural history museum while maintaining a formal link to Minimalist sculpture.

In conjunction with the Artist Spotlight launch, a conversation between Damien Hirst and James Fox about Bickerton and his work will be published in Gagosian Quarterly online on October 26. Bickerton's first solo exhibition with the gallery is scheduled for 2023 at Gagosian New York.

Artist Spotlight is a dynamic platform that enables artists to present their work in the digital realm, sharing their stories with a global audience online. The series, which launched in April 2020 and is now in its third season, is presented once a month as a regular part of Gagosian's programming. Each installment highlights the work of an individual artist through new editorial features and archival content, and new work is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.