Lehmann Maupin is pleased to collaborate with Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld on a two-person exhibition pairing long time gallery artist Ashley Bickerton and Nicolas Pol together for the first time. The exhibition presents a dialogue between two distinctive and wildly imaginative artists, born of different generations, who draw upon a similar reactive nature to construct vibrant, fantastical, and often times, otherworldly images of apocalyptic proportion.

Ashley Bickerton’s work from the late 80s and early 90s was fueled by a critical assessment of America’s obsession with consumerism; created in reaction to the sleek packaging, corporate branding, and growing reliance on technology that dominated the cultural landscape at the time. His object-based sculptures, or “Culture-scapes,” from this period were angry, defiant constructions covered in logos and seemingly built to withstand apocalyptic devastation. Bickerton’s move to Bali in 1997 paralleled a dramatic visual shift to figurative painting and sculpture. As an expat, he found the “idyllic” paradise to be “riddled with corruption, greed, snarling Third-World traffic and a booming 21st century economy.” His new work depicting scenes of modern-day hedonism, carried out by fictional characters of a surreal and hallucinatory nature, portray a world lacking in morality, one that has moved beyond redemption. Five works by Bickerton, spanning a twenty-year period, will be featured in the exhibition, including four paintings and an early sculpture from 1992 entitled Seascape: Floating Costume to Drift for Eternity III (Elvis Suit).