Doug Ashford (b. 1958, Rabat; based in New York) is an artist, writer and Associate Professor at The Cooper Union in NYC where he has taught design, theory, sculpture, and public art since 1989. Coming from a background of socially engaged public practice in the eighties and nineties as a member of the New York-based artist collective Group Material (1982-1996), Ashford took up painting in earnest after the collective ended. He has lectured internationally at numerous institutes and schools, and a selection of his writing has been collected in a publication produced on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Grazer Kunstverein in 2013: Doug Ashford: Writings and Conversations.
Ashford now focuses on the mediating role of the artwork itself by re-depicting social and political manifestations through abstract painting. Recent works explore also new expressions through abstraction in the medium of digital printing and video.
His work has been shown at The Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, NCCA, Ekaterinburg (RU), 2017; Mass MoCA, MA (US), 2017; the Gwangju Biennial (ROK) 2016; Whitechapel, London (UK) 2015; the Grazer Kunstverein (AT), 2013; and dOCUMENTA 12 (DE) 2012; and the Sharjah Biennial (UAE) 2011, among many others.
www.dougashford.info/
Click here to download CV as PDF
Doug Ashford talks about Bakersfield CA, 2013 at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter: