DEAD GUYS GET HARDONS TOO

KONSEPT.

Dead Guys Get Hardons Too is not a return, but an reopening of old wounds. The project brings motifs from Sons of Odin (2001) and Black Low (2002–2003) back into the room – not as archived works, but as material that can still pulse, bleed and transform.

In their original form, these projects were both appropriations and
acts of transformation – images drawn from subcultural fringes, charged
with violence, myth-making and self-fashioning. Now, they are
reintroduced into a time in which our relationship with images has
become more aggressive, more fluid and more relentless than ever.

In collaboration with the print studio, this has not become an
exercise in reproduction, but a new staging. The process has produced
works caught in a constant tension between original and resurrection;
they carry both history and the present within the same body.

The concept points towards a phenomenon we live with every day:
symbols and icons do not die. They are pulled from the grave, given a
new face and returned to circulation.

Dead Guys Get Hardons Too makes this mechanism visible – and uncomfortable. It reminds us that what is reanimated rarely returns unchanged.

As an exhibition, the project functions both as an encounter with
Melgaard’s early work and as a statement about art’s resistance to being
sealed shut. It is a reminder that artworks can continue to live – to
disturb, provoke and transform themselves – long after they were
supposed to have been laid to rest.

EXHIBITION, PROCESS & TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Dead Guys Get Hardons Too consists of 45 hand-painted graphic works in various sizes, a video installation, and one rave.

The exhibition opens at 8:00 PM on September 12, 2025, and will
remain open for one week. Opening hours will be announced separately.

There will be no finissage.

The artist will be present at the opening.

During the exhibition period, a limited selection of works will be
available for special purchase. Any works from this selection that
remain unsold at the end of the exhibition will be burned.

PROCESS

The first step is to buy a high-quality printer that you are prepared to destroy.

Paint and colour vast quantities of heavy fine-art paper designed for
water-based ink using varnish, acrylic, ink, oil paint, gouache,
coloured pencils and whatever else seems appropriate.

Then hope the printer can withstand the fumes from all these mediums,
the dust, and paper that is stiff as fucking hell and warped out of
shape – while meticulously feeding each painted sheet through the
aforementioned printer.

That is, essentially, the process.

It is also where things become interesting.

TECHNIQUE

Texts about art tend to be texts about concepts rather than technique
or craft. What follows is therefore not about the concept behind the
exhibition, but about the technical process behind the works that have
been produced.

This is rarely something discussed by print studios or the people
actually operating the presses and printers – perhaps because it is not
considered particularly interesting.

I hope someone gets something out of it.

Digital printing is more or less exactly what it sounds like: a
printing matrix, or an image, exists on a computer and can be
transferred onto paper.

There are remarkably few parameters or limitations regarding what can
be printed, and the aesthetic result is wonderfully predictable. You
can already see it on the screen.

That is the great strength of the technique.

Predictability.

Freedom of design.

But every now and then, I find myself missing something within those
parameters: a tactile quality, something less intuitive, less controlled
and less even.

That is why it is so satisfying to undertake a project as unpredictable as this one.

We do not know whether our equipment will survive.

We do not know exactly how some of the works will look until they are finished.

Modern printers use lightfast, water-based inks that are deposited
into a proprietary coating on specially manufactured paper. The moment
you introduce water, chemicals or oil-based mediums as another layer,
almost anything can happen.

Ink can react.

Surfaces can shift.

Paper can warp.

The printer can protest.

Or simply give up.

And that uncertainty is precisely what makes the process worthwhile.

There could hardly be a better purpose for destroying a perfectly good printer than this exhibition.

And there is no other artist I would rather do it with.