Bjarne Melgaard. Right Here, Right Now

About

The originators of The Situationist International and The God Father of Disco. Chihuahuas, tigers and a somewhat transformed Light Bulb Man. What are the connections between Guy Debord, Michèle Bernstein, Giorgio Moroder and more familiar subject matter in Bjarne Melgaard’s imagery? His works are dense with entries and optional interpretations and the uncertainty one can experience looking at his pieces are fundamental to Melgaard’s work. Private mythologies or fictitious autobiographies are tangled up with cultural references and Nietzschean philosophy. With the means of an abstracted reality, Melgaard challenges authorities and questions preconceived notions on normality. Passion transcends reason through its anti-social nature in a quest for absolute, personal freedom. An ambition that echoes from Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord: the social alienation, consumerism and exploitation that shall be replaced with an autonomous, free and impassioned human existence. In Right Here, Right Now, Bjarne Melgaard’s eighth solo show at Lars Bohman Gallery, the focus is set at the artist as painter and draughtsman. Melgaard as a formalist with traditional interests in composition, color and form and with an expression in constant dialogue with predecessors such as Asger Jorn, who aside from beeing a founding member of the COBRA movement also was involved with the Situationists. A distinctly ferocious and intense style filled with claims and contradictions.