Bjarne Melgaard The Casual Pleasure Of Disappointment

Red Bull Arts New York
220 West 18th Street
New York

Red Bull Arts New York is pleased to announce that its inaugural exhibition, under its new moniker, will be the first large-scale presentation of Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard’s ongoing project, The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment. 

Coinciding with New York Fashion Week, Melgaard launches The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, an unrelenting multi-site, multi-night, culmination of his ongoing ‘fashion’ project. Centered around Red Bull Arts New York, which Melgaard and company have transformed into a multilevel psycho-pathological department store that opens to the public on February 16, Gavin Brown’s enterprise will function as the jewelry department – hosting the American launch of his collaboration with jeweler Bjørg Nordli-Mathisen (BJØRG). The same collaborative jewelry collection made its European debut at the Astrup Fearnley Museum this past November in Oslo.

Produced in collaboration with creative director Babak Radboy, the exhibition will feature a presentation of the eponymous menswear/unisex clothing line, The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, which violently embraces the obsessive and self-destructive aspects of fashion and consumerism. For Melgaard, fashion is a vague nothing at the intersection of a subject and an object — between inadequacy, self-deceit, victimization, ethical compromise, intellectual humiliation, financial/romantic entanglements and corporeal decay — driven by an infinite cycle of disappointment and desire.

Red Bull Arts New York will be transformed into a derelict department store populated by an army of genetically enhanced mannequins in bespoke looks produced in collaboration with art/fashion stylist Avena Gallagher.

For more information: http://redbullartsnewyork.com/exhibition/casual-pleasure-disappointment/