Mike Bidlo

Michael "Mike" Bidlo (born 20 October 1953) is an American conceptual artist who uses painting, sculpture, drawing, performance and other forms of "social sculpture." He was born in Chicago, Illinois and studied at the University of Illinois (BA,1973), Southern Illinois University Carbondale (MFA,1975), and at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York, (MA,1978).

In 1980 shortly after moving to New York from Chicago, Bidlo participated in Colab’s Times Square Show and in 1982 Bidlo was awarded a studio at the P.S. One Museum where he staged Jack the Dripper at Peg's Place, an installation rendering his vision of Peggy Guggenheim’s Beekman Place townhouse, with the fireplace famously used by Pollock as a pissoir. Bidlo’s event was an act of homage and defiance and for the next few years he immersed himself in discovering how to paint like Pollock, then executing his series to scale of “NOT Pollock” drip paintings. Bidlo had studied the Namuth photographs and films and he worked from reproductions, to scale using as close to the original medium used by Pollock as possible. Bidlo also created a series of “NOT Pollock” drip paintings in a small square format on masonite, many of which he shared in the Pier 34 experiment.

The Pier 34 project was co-organized by Mike Bidlo and David Wojnarowicz and lasted from 1983-84 until it was closed by the police. The pier was located in the abandoned Ward Line shipping terminal located at the foot of Canal Street. Bidlo and Wojnarowicz issued a statement and an invitation spread through art channels including Lucy Lippard for artists to come and work in the pier building. “…And this is just the start for all of us. We are all responsible for what it currently is and what it will become. This is something possible anywhere there are abandoned buildings. This is something possible everywhere…” Bidlo/Wojnarowicz.

In 1983 Bidlo painted his version of Picasso’s “Demoiselles d’Avignon” in the P.S. One studio. This painting was subsequently shown in “Picasso’s Women: 1901-1971” at Leo Castelli Gallery, the “Masterpieces” exhibition at Bruno Bischofberger Gallery and in 2015 at the Grand Palais in Paris. This painting was the beginning of Bidlo’s reinventions and recreations of iconic works in the history of modernist masters. He began to produce a large body of painting and sculpture, including a series based on Warhol’s “Campbell Soup Cans,” Duchamp’s, “Bicycle Wheel” and “Bottlerack,” and major works by Cézanne, Matisse and others. Many of these works were exhibited in 1989 in the “Masterpieces” exhibition.

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