The War at Home: Norwegian Critics Rain Fire on Prodigal Son Bjarne Melgaard for Munch Show — artnews.com

Bjarne Melgaard’s current show at the Munch Museum in Oslo, “The End of It Has Already Happened,” which pairs the work of Norway’s most celebrated contemporary artist with one of its national icons, has turned into “a huge national scandal gone completely media viral,” in the words of the exhibition’s curator, Lars Toft-Eriksen. Melgaard, something of a celebrity in his native country, has become a beloved, if occasionally controversial artist in the U.S. as well. (His studio is in New York.) He often deals with themes of homoerotism, sexual defilement, race, and a radical personal mythology in his work. One series had assistants create faithful reproductions of covers of publications by NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which Melgaard then painted over. In another, possibly apocryphal project, called AIDS Roulette, he gathered together six gay men, one of whom was HIV positive, then chose one man at random to have unprotected intercourse with.

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