Bjarne Melgaard


Bjarne Melgaard is a Norwegian artist based in New York City. He has been described as "one of Norway's most important artists" and, following the 2014 publicity about his sculpture Chair, "the most famous Norwegian artist since Edvard Munch."

Life and work

Melgaard was born in Sydney, Australia to Norwegian parents, and was raised in Oslo, Norway. In 2009, he moved permanently to New York. Melgaard studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 1991 to 1992 and at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht from 1992 to 1993.
Early in his career Melgaard created controversial installations referencing subversive subcultures such as S&M and heavy metal music. Currently, his practice consists of an emphasis on expressionistic paintings and drawings, often containing text.
His first show in New York was in 2000, where he exhibited sculptures of apes engaged in sex acts.
In January 2014, Melgaard's artwork Chair caused controversy. Chair is a sculpture of a bound black woman on her back with a seat cushion on her thighs, and is a reinterpretation of a similar piece by British pop artist Allen Jones. The controversy began when Russian art socialite Dasha Zhukova was photographed sitting on the cushion for a fashion website, resulting in online accusations of racism under the Twitter hashtag #racistchair. Guardian critic Jonathan Jones suggested that this controversy was a misunderstanding of Melgaard's intentions, and Zhukova said that the photograph of her was "out of context"; the artwork intended to be a "commentary on gender and racial politics". Melgaard himself released a statement responding to the controversy that was labelled by some writers as "bizarre".
Melgaard has collaborated with Norwegian artist Sverre Koren Bjertnaes in several exhibitions. The two alternate to work on the same canvas, giving them an expression neither of the artists would achieve alone.

Notable exhibitions

2019
2013
  • "Bjarne Melgaard", Astrup Fearnley, Oslo
  • "Ignorant Transparencies", Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York
2012
2008
2007
2006
  • Helter Helter, Galerie Anne De Villepoix, Paris
  • Les Super, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin
  • A Weekend of Painting; A novel by Les Super, Galerie Leo Koenig, New York
2005
2004
  • Tirol Transfer, Oesterreichisches Kulturforum, Warsaw
2003
  • Skam, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen
  • The End of The Professional Teenager, Sketch, London
2002
  • Black Low, MARTa Herford Museum, Hannover
  • Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna
2001
  • New Heimat, Kunstverein Frankfurt
2000
  • Sharing Exoticisms, 5th Biennale de Lyon
Melgaard appears in Until the Light Takes Us, a documentary about the Norwegian black metal scene in the 1990s. The film featured in the 15th Athens International Film Festival, screened at Danaos Cinema. In the film, an exhibition of Melgaard's in a Stockholm gallery is extensively shown, along with his comments on black/death metal.