Getting Chippy With It featuring Bjarne Melgaard

In this show you will see 34 different varieties of rare chips. If you are British, you would probably call them “crisps”. What do rare crisps, or chips (depending on where you’re from), have to do with politically loaded sculptures that have already dated themselves? Getting Chippy With It presents viewers with this seemingly irreverent proposition. Utilizing Bjarne Melgaard’s notorious Allen Jones Remakes (2013), a physical space has been created in order to more closely observe the true legacy and nature of this work; as well as other historically problematic works like Jones’s original Hatstand, Table and Chair (1969).

Bjarne Melgaard (b. 1967) created Allen Jones Remakes to be displayed in New York City in a show entitled Gang Bust: William N. Copley & BFBC, Inc. In that exhibition, these works were presented alongside a career-spanning group of paintings by William Copley. In creating the new works, Melgaard suggests a kinship between his work and not just the work of Copley, but also that of Copley’s contemporary, Allen Jones.

Allen Jones (b. 1937) is a British pop artist whose complex work often centers itself upon a hyper-sexualized version of the female form. The three sculptures, entitled Hatstand, Table and Chair, are the original works that Melgaard’s Remakes were modeled after. After Jones’s originals were first exhibited in 1970, in London, they were immediately denounced by feminist critics. In 1973 the work was lambasted in an article by filmmaker, Laura Mulvey. She accused Jones of being terrified of women and “having castration anxiety.” In 1978, while on display at the ICA (London), protestors physically attacked the work with smoke and stink bombs. Then, in 1986, while on view at the Tate, two vandals threw paint thinner at the Chair. The damage which resulted from the attack required significant restoration.

Melgaard’s suggestion of kinship was substantiated when, in 2014, the problematic legacy of these works reemerged. The magazine, Buro 24/7, sparked international outrage when it released a photograph of Russian art dealer and patron, Dasha Zhukova, seated on Melgaard’s remake of Jones’s Chair. However, unlike the feminist controversies that plagued Jones, this time the public’s negative interpretation centered itself around the fact that, in his Remakes, Melgaard depicted the figures as black women, instead of white women. To complicate things more, the work didn’t seem to be the issue; rather, it was the photo of a an affluent, white woman seated upon the representation of a black woman that was at the epicenter of the uproar. The public reaction was only exacerbated more by the fact that Buro 24/7 published the photograph to their website on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Now, in 2021, the controversy surrounding both the originals and remakes seems to have calmed. Both Allen Jones and Bjarne Melgaard are renowned artists. Despite that, the discourse which gave rise to the 2014 backlash (as well as the backlash to the Jones originals) seems to have heightened considerably.

In order to better understand the various interpretations of these works, an alternate presentation is offered. The space now surrounding the statues is meant to emulate a new form of consumer recreation, called exotic snacks. Exotic snack stores straddle the boundary of globalism and cultural integration; while also promoting more problematic undertones such as exoticism, colonialism and cultural appropriation. The Melgaard statues seem strangely at peace within such a space. They can be appreciated for both their pleasant features, while also mindfully, yet unabashedly, referencing the more problematic implications of the work.

The middle ground of exotic snacks hopefully provides viewers with a unique opportunity to confront issues that are often uncomfortable and considered “off limits” to artists. Getting Chippy With It is a reminder that we must be conscious of how we are shaping the world; while also being cognizant of the dangers of censorship.