Archive

Bjarne Melgaard at Luxembourg and Dayan Is The Daily Pic By Blake Gopnik

Wild Aesthetics

The Daily Pic: Bjarne Melgaard makes paintings with bite.

articles/2012/12/19/bjarne-melgaard-at-luxembourg-and-dayan-is-the-daily-pic-by-blake-gopnik/melgaard-daily-pic_wwyyei
Bjarne Melgaard's "Outergaze Violent Group Disco Version" and "He Prefers Time Without You Than Time With Anybody Else" (Courtesy Luxembourg and Dayan)
articles/2012/12/19/bjarne-melgaard-at-luxembourg-and-dayan-is-the-daily-pic-by-blake-gopnik/melgaard-daily-pic_pp8qep

These are two of the “tiger” paintings by the Norwegian Bjarne Melgaard, from his solo show at Luxembourg & Dayan gallery on New York’s Upper East Side. The paintings are immersed in a wild-and-woolygesamtkunstwerk that includes stacks of a surreal, wildly violent, porn-filthy novel by Melgaard, as well as sculptural installations straight out of the mind of a disturbed teen. But I find these paintings more profoundly peculiar than any of Melgaard’s more explicitly (and conventionally) outlandish gestures. I’ve never seen anything quite like Melgaard’s tigers; they have a fearful asymmetry worthy of William Blake.

For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.