This lavishly illustrated career survey of the work of Ashley Bickerton provides unprecedented insight into the artist's life and art. As one of the loose collection of New York artists, including Haim Steinbach and Jeff Koons, whose work inspired the appellation Neo-Geo, Bickerton first rose to prominence in New York in the mid-1980s with vibrant abstract works infused with a sardonic critique of consumer culture. These gave way in the early 1990s to tropically derived pieces redolent of concern for thenatural environment. The artist's move, in 1993, to the surfer's paradise of Bali, Indonesia, occasioned the development of a richly hued aesthetic that has found expression in diverse paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Combining the fantastically exotic with the troublingly nightmarish, Bickerton's evocative work continues to evolve. Throughout this eclectic monograph, the artist's own commentary is interwoven with text from additional contributors, including essays by fellow artist Jake Chapman, novelist Nick McDonell, art historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau, curator Dominic Molon, and the artist's father, the noted linguist-anthropologist Derek Bickerton. Also included is an interview with Bickerton conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of London's. Serpentine Gallery, presented in the form of a comic novel with illustrations by graphic artist Ignacio Noé. This book, designed by Stefan Sagmeister in close collaboration with the artist, is a striking work of art in its own right, featuring a fold-out poster, die-cut pages and more than 300 colour illustrations.
About the Author: Derek Bickerton is the father of Ashley Bickerton and is a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Jake Chapman has collaborated since 1992 with his brother, Dinos, as part of the Chapman Brothers, an artistic duo that was first distinguished in the 1990s as part of the London-based Young British Artists movement. American fiction writer Nick McDonnell published his acclaimed first novel, Twelve, at the age of 17. He has now authored two additional books: An Expensive Education (2009) and The Third Brother (2005). Dominic Molon is a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago whose recent exhibitions include Liam Gillick: Three perspectives and a short scenario (2010) and Sympathy For the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 (2007).

Graphic designer and typographer Stefan Sagmeister is renown for his artistic conception of products ranging from albums covers to museum catalogues and popular books, including Made You Look and Things I Have Learned in Life So Far. His work has been exhibited worldwide.