New York-based artist and creative director Babak Radboy is known for his subversive take on art and commerce. For his latest project, the Bidoun magazine and Shanzhai Biennial creative director teamed up with Muppets creator Jim Henson Company for a special project about Norwegian multimedia artist Bjarne Melgaard, who has made a name for himself for his controversial conceptual works. In presenting a puppet in Melgaard's image, the film jovially questions the nature of artistic appropriation. Here, Radboy talks about the collaboration:

“I worked with the Jim Henson Company to design a muppet in the likeness of artist Bjarne Melgaard for his exhibition, The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment, at Gallerie Thaddeus Ropac, Paris. It was a very different incarnation of the exhibition by the same title currently up at Red Bull Arts New York, which encapsulates my ongoing fashion collaboration with Bjarne.

“The muppet is a marketing object, one in an abyss of likenesses that compose the Melgaard brand—a project including several streetwear collections, videos, magazines, ad campaigns, installations and more. A certain spirit holds the project together and there is a noticeable absence of Bjarne’s hand—at times, even of his most basic input.

“This would, of course, fall comfortably within the category of artistic appropriation—but wouldn’t it be darker if the opposite were true?”

The Casual Pleasure of Disappointment is on at Red Bull Arts New York through 9 April 2017