T he New York artist Michael Egan was at his gallery on the Lower East Side when a craggy-faced Norwegian named Bjarne Melgaard came wandering in off the street. “He was a mountain of muscle,” Egan said. “He had a Samuel Beckett face, with creases and crevices deeper than the Grand Canyon.
He was dressed in a combination of Supreme skateboarding clothing and extremely expensive luxury fashion. He seemed nervous.” Egan regarded Melgaard as one of the great artists of the age.
He had encountered Melgaard’s work for the first time the previous year, at the Venice Biennale. “I felt like I felt when I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time,” he said. “There was something on the line.
” The Norwegian said he wanted to do three shows, back to back, the first featuring two live tigers. The tigers would be pacing about tearing up pieces of clothing. “I didn’t even know if that was legal, but I just said yes,” Egan said.
This, he believed, was an artist who was forever “pushing the limits of what’s possible”..