Happy Happy Joy Joy

BJARNE MELGAARD | FLEXBOJ & L.A. | MIKE KELLEY | NELLO MARGODT | PHEBE HERMANS

November 8 - December 14 2025 - Baudelostraat 23, 9000 gent

BARBÉ is proud to present ‘Happy Happy Joy Joy’ , on view at our space in Baudelostraat 23, 9000 Ghent, from November 8 to December 14, 2025.

We bring together internationally renowned artists Mike Kelley (USA) and Bjarne Melgaard (NO) in dialogue with gallery duo Flexboj & L.A. (BE) and invited emerging artists Phebe Hermans (BE) and Nello Margodt (BE).

The group exhibition explores the tension between playfulness and unease. What appears cheerful and childlike at first glance with brightly coloured paintings, teddy bears, and other seemingly innocent motifs, reveals a darker, unsettling undercurrent. The works balance between optimism and menace, between childlike joy and the disorienting atmosphere of trauma and a fever dream.

Happy Happy Joy Joy
8 November - 14 December 2025
Baudelostraat 23 9000
Gent - BE

Resquest a preview or more information via:
desk@barbegallery.be
+32 9 391 39 13

Discover more about the participating artists below:

Bjarne Melgaard (1967, NO) is a Norwegian artist known for his confrontational and psychologically charged explorations of desire, power structures, subcultures and the darker fringes of contemporary society. Emerging in the 1990s with raw, expressive installations, drawings, writings and environments populated by fictional characters, cartoon-like figures and fetish-tinged imagery, Melgaard built a visual language that merges pop aesthetics with an undercurrent of dread, intimacy and transgression. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, film and text, he has become one of the most polarising and influential Nordic voices in international contemporary art.

Melgaard is regarded as one of the most influential Nordic artists of his generation, known for expanding the vocabulary of expressionism within a contemporary context. His work continues to challenge conventional boundaries between high and low culture, personal narrative and collective myth, offering an unfiltered lens on the complexities of modern life.

Major solo exhibitions include Bjarne Melgaard, Astrup Fearnley Museet, 2010, Oslo (NO), Bjarne Melgaard, ICA, 2000, London (UK), Boy Meets Girl, Galerie Krinzinger, 2004, Vienna (AT), Jealous, Kunsthalle St. Gallen, 2007, St. Gallen (CH), The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, Red Bull Arts, 2017, New York (USA), The End of Forever, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 2012, New York (USA), A New Novel by Bjarne Melgaard, Luxembourg & Dayan, 2011, London (UK), Sex Shoes, Munchmuseet on the Move, 2018, Oslo (NO), and Bjarne Melgaard, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2018, Paris (FR). His key international platforms include the 54th Venice Biennale, 2011, Venice (IT), Manifesta 8, 2010, Murcia (ES), and the Lyon Biennale, 2013, Lyon (FR). Works by Melgaard are held in major collections including the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (NO), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (USA), the National Museum, Oslo (NO), and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR).

Flexboj & L.A. (BE, 1995) is an artist duo from Brussels, BE. Their subjects are used as a way of self-justification are often found images from various sources, high culture and low culture, remixed and manipulated together with their own views and visual language. At the core of their artistic practice lies an ongoing conversation between the two artists. This exchange of ideas not only guides their painting but also fuels their ever-evolving process. It sparks a fluid shift between different source materials, resulting in a range of visual forms.

Flexboj & L.A.graduated together with a mutual project in 2018 which led to heir first show in INBOX, MuHKA in 2019. In 2021 they had their first solo at the gallery ‘Alimentation Générale’ of which The Flemish government acquired two paintings in loan to the collection of MuHKA in Antwerp. They had a solo ‘Geel Mooi’ at CC Het Perron in Yper as laureates of the Louise Dehem prize for painting in 2023. In 2024 they had their 2nd solo 'Ashtrays, Pots & Macramé' at BARBÉ and participated at the group show 'Together: Collaborative Practices' at S.M.A.K. in Ghent, BE.

Mike Kelley (1954–2012, USA) was an American multidisciplinary artist known for his provocative explorations of memory, trauma, youth culture, pop symbolism and institutional power. Rising to international prominence in the 1990s with his now-iconic assemblages of stuffed animals, dolls and discarded textiles, Kelley used these abject pop-cultural materials to expose the emotional undercurrents and social conditioning embedded in childhood and mass culture. His broader practice spanned sculpture, installation, video, performance, drawing and sound, and he became one of the most influential figures of the Los Angeles art scene and international contemporary art from the 1980s onward.

Major solo exhibitions include The Uncanny, Kunstverein, 1993, Düsseldorf (DE), Catholic Tastes, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1993, New York (USA), Educational Complex, Metro Pictures, 1995, New York (USA), Kandor-Con 2000, Kunstverein, 2000, Frankfurt (DE), Mike Kelley, Tate Liverpool, 2004, Liverpool (UK), Day Is Done, Gagosian Gallery, 2005, New York (USA), Profound Self-Disgust, Galerie Gisela Capitain, 2008, Cologne (DE), Mike Kelley (Retrospective), Stedelijk Museum, 2012–2013, Amsterdam (NL), Mike Kelley (Retrospective), Centre Pompidou, 2013, Paris (FR), Mike Kelley (Retrospective), MoMA PS1, 2013, New York (USA), Mike Kelley, MoCA – The Geffen Contemporary, 2014, Los Angeles (USA), en Mike Kelley, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, 2023, Paris (FR). Key group exhibitions and biennales include Documenta 7, 1982, Kassel (DE), Documenta 9, 1992, Kassel (DE), the Whitney Biennial, 1985 and 1993, New York (USA), the Carnegie International, 1991, Pittsburgh (USA), the Lyon Biennale, 1997, Lyon (FR), and the Venice Biennale, 2003, Venice (IT). His work is held in major museum collections including MoMA, New York (USA), MoCA, Los Angeles (USA), Tate, London (UK), Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (USA).

Nello Margodt (1997,BE) works and lives in Brussels. His practice moves between drawing, painting and installation. Taking inspiration from theatre and cinema, he constructs fictional stages that serve as frameworks for his ever-evolving narratives. Within these imagined spaces, snapshots from everyday life function as gateways,  linking one scene to another and becoming building blocks in his ongoing process of world-building.

The works he presents at Happy Happy Joy Joy grew out of his attempt to bring to life the main characters of a fictional theatre play. Stepping into the spotlight, these ever-shifting figures take shape as they emerge from portals, appear as particles of light, or materialize out of thin air, suspended between presence and illusion.

Nello Margodt exhibited

Phebe Hermans ‘ (1995, BE)' drawings create a quiet world where small gestures and hidden emotions come to the surface. Corners, openings and intimate spaces become places of curiosity, tension and play. The works have a playful touch, yet there is always an underlying sense of threat. This threat often appears in the recurring need for escape routes and hiding places that accompany the actions taking place within the image. Using pencil and brush, she searches for what lies beneath the surface of her own thoughts, revealing moments of solitude as well as secret joy. Working on simple A4 paper, she builds a personal and contained space in which she can explore, hide, and slowly allow things to appear.