Ashley Bickerton

More than 15 years ago, Bickerton decamped from New York to live and work in Bali, Indonesia. Since then, the art he's produced—paintings, mixed-media assemblages and sculptures—suggests a strange mix of Paul Gauguin, Raymond Chandler and Colonel Kurtz. In a style that's equal parts cartoonish and hyperreal, Bickerton depicts paradise as a globalist Gomorrah populated by Thai prostitutes, lei-garlanded hula beauties and his own bad self, all presented as a vision that's simultaneously alluring and monstrous.