BJARNE MELGAARD was born 1967 in Sydney, Australia. Lives and works in Oslo, Norway. He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo (1991) and later moved to the Netherlands to complete his studies at Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (1992) and Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (1993).  

Bjarne Melgaard has exhibited at numerous institutions worldwide since the mid-nineties, among them are Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; MARTa Herford Museum, Hannover; Tbilisi Museum of Modern Art, Tbilisi; S.M.A.K, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; Munch Museum, Oslo; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London and Paris; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; Lars Bohman Gallery, Stockholm. He represented Norway at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and has also participated in the Whitney Biennial (2014), the Lyon Biennale (2000 and 2013) and XXIV Biennale de Sao Paulo (1998). In 2019, Bjarne Melgaard created his first virtual reality work My Trip with Acute Art, which was shown at the Julia Stoschek Foundation in Berlin. Together with Steiff, he created a toy collection that was showcased at Kunsthall Stavanger in 2022, in collaboration with the musician and artist Chris Korda. In 2023, the Munch Museum in Oslo will do a major retrospective of Bjarne Melgaard’s work, it will be the first comprehensive survey of Melgaard's career at a public institution in his homeland. During 2024 Bjarne Melgaard will exhibit solo at Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway; and at Museum Dhondt–Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium; and in 2025 at Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum, Tønsberg, Norway.

Bjarne Melgaard’s work is represented in various private and public international collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Saatchi Gallery, London; Acute Art, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Magasin III – Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; Munch Museum, Oslo; Astrup Fearnely Museet, Oslo; Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum, Tønsberg; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MARTa Herford Museum, Herford; Musées de Strasbourg, Strasbourg; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; S.M.A.K, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent.