M HKA Ensembles

° 1967

Lives in New York City (US), born in Sydney (AU).

Bjarne Melgaard is a New York-based Norwegian artist creates works with violent and sexually explicit overtones. While he has toned down his viscerally confrontational works, tending more toward loose and colorful expressionist paintings, Melgaard often completely transforms the sites in which he exhibits, on both an aesthetic and fundamental level, changing not only the wallpaper, but turning them into white tiger playpens or sites for sleeping. As a novelist, painter, and video artist, Melgaard deftly eludes rote art world classifications, bringing his defiant sense of profane humor with him to every new project. Bjarne Melgaard has shown his work in exhibitions around the world including at the 5th Biennale de Lyon in 2000, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2006, and London's Institute of Contemporary Art in 2012.