STEVE LAFRENIERE : In 1986 you were in the infamous neo-geo show at Sonnabend with Peter Halley, Meyer Vaisman, and Jeff Koons. It seemed as if the critics wanted to cast the four of you in total opposition to both neo-expressionism and the Pictures artists.ASHLEY BICKERTON: That was probably all that united us. We were cool or cold and we were against “them.” The angry young men rebelling, and like all rebellions it was about taking control.SL: Did the four of you have the idea of being shown together?AB: No. It didn’t even have to be the four of us, it just turned out that way. That package
KATY SIEGEL: Let’s begin with your move to New York from Chicago. What year did you come here?JEFF KOONS: I originally hitchhiked here at the end of ’76, but I didn’t officially move to New York until January ’77. In Chicago I went to the School of the Art Institute, and I enjoyed it because I was studying with people whose work and passion I really respected, like Ed Paschke and Jim Nutt. But I lost interest in my own work, which had been in kind of a personal iconography, and I realized that different things were happening in New York different communities, the New Wave music scene. And that’s