In the video for their new single “Man Made of Meat,” the Swedish punk band Viagra Boys take on the art world with their characteristic absurdist satire. The video opens with a heavily tattooed man wearing a tank top, lead singer Sebastian Murphy, in a museum, gazing at a painting of fleshy-pink organic forms, also tattooed. He takes a swig from a bottle of wine, then tosses it aside, where it shatters on the floor. Other museum-goers mistake the debris for an artwork, and he is quickly taken under the wing of a man in a slick suit, played by Swedish artist Ernst Billgren, who molds Murphy into the next art superstar.
“The basic concept of the film was born out of an idea of putting the band in a context where they don’t really belong,” the video’s director, Daniel Björkman, told Hyperallergic. “What happens when you put Viagra Boys in an art gallery? This fragile, fleeting place.”
Billgren’s character mentors Murphy, sets him up in a studio, and shepherds him through various art movements and styles. He riffs on the readymade, placing a wine bottle on a Duchampian bottle rack; paints a massive canvas with a spray gun in a send-up of zombie formalism; and parodies action painting, dripping paint as he flies through the air wearing a harness.
That last example recalls a scene from The Big Lebowski (1998) in which Julianne Moore’s character, Maude Lebowski, zip-lines across her studio, frantically flinging paint, though Björkman says the connection is coincidental.
“That wasn’t something we thought of at all when we came up with that scene. We were thinking of something kind of completely different and more contemporary,” he said. “It’s also funny in a way, because everything has been done in art. When you put your story in this vast world, people will find references to artists and works that I’ve never even heard or thought of.”
Björkman also noted that René Magritte was a major aesthetic influence for the video, which was shot at Stockholm’s Konstnärshuset and the 17th-century Bogesund Castle.
Alongside the humorous art historical references, the video features several paintings by contemporary Swedish artist Leo Park, whose work “Swedish Bather” (2025) Murphy is seen contemplating at the outset. Park also created the cover art for the band’s forthcoming album, a surreal portrait of Murphy, instantly recognizable by the word “lös” (“loose” in Swedish) tattooed on his forehead.
Park said he was influenced by a devilish elf-like character created by Murphy, who is also a prominent tattoo artist, as well as the iconic cover for Sonic Youth’s 1992 album Dirty, which features a Mike Kelley photograph of a worn stuffed animal.
Park said he had no misgivings about his actual artwork being included in the parade of darkly comic cliches.
“You just have to let go of your control over it,” he explained. “You have to put trust in the band or the director. You collide with another artist, and something you couldn’t foresee will come out of it.”
After his meteoric rise to fame, the parties, scandals, and a record-breaking auction helmed by Billgren, Murphy becomes overwhelmed. A vortex of images swirls around him, his anxiety mirrored in the chorus’s lyrics: “I hate almost everything that I see, and I just wanna disappear.” Flashback to the opening scene — though instead of tossing the wine bottle, Murphy simply walks off.
“It’s kind of ambiguous … an open-ended situation,” Park surmised. “That life isn’t for him, but it’s hard to discern if he’s still gonna make art, or just not be involved in that world.”
