“Insanity — a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”
― R.D. Laing
Bjarne Melgaard’s exhibition at Patricia Low Contemporary will feature a new series of twenty eight small scale paintings developed by the artist in response to his ongoing interest in extreme psychological states and the imagery such altered consciousness inspires. The works evoke the primal, even deranged emotions explored in art movements such as COBRA, Folk Art and Outsider Art; while the frenzied gestures and physicality of the oil paint application firmly root the paintings in the singular, personal domain of the artist.
The works are both remnants of the performance of their own production and what the artist describes as the “amoral act” of painting. By this, Melgaard is talking about painting within contemporary art as “fetish objects” in the hyper-capitalist system. Painting as totem for the twenty first century. The pictures are brash and brutal in their sophistication, often focusing on demonic faces which melt into layers of blurred color. There are also bizarre dreamlike scenes that feature otherworldly creatures, part dolphin, part alligator.
