Bruno
Pélassy

Born in 1966 in Vientiane, Laos
Died in 2002 in Nice, France


Throughout his life, Pélassy embodied a dazzling and multifaceted persona, as a crossover artist whose work defies easy categorisation. He painted, drew, performed, created sculptures, films, couture, and jewellery. Formal and playful material excesses tend to blur disciplinary boundaries, making it challenging to separate his artistic endeavours from his approach to daily existence. Pélassy was a rampant collector; and it was the very things that others seemed to no longer have any use for that attracted him the most: faded fabrics from various countries, jewellery, books, and toys, as well as records, and old VHS tapes.

The techniques of collaging, sewing, separating, and connecting are deeply embedded in his work process and testify to his studies as a textile and jewellery designer. They enabled him to continually re-adapt reality to his needs and to create formulas for what he felt did not fit. He relied on the combination of different techniques, processes, and materials which he borrowed from both the realms of haute couture and the second- hand culture of a throwaway society, thus combining high-quality production methods with the use of cheap as well as everyday materials. Simple pencil drawings were as integral to Pélassy’s practice as the meticulous crafting of glass and crystal, along with the creation of jewellery or reliquary-like objects.

Significantly shaped by an early diagnosis of HIV at the age of twenty-one, Pélassy’s work ponders the ambivalent poetics of illness, infection, and death. He perceived the body as a porous and erratic entity that was simultaneously deeply interwoven with its environment. His practice can be considered a personal and political engagement with the norms of desire, nature, gender, social values, and health, as well as a plea for the dissolution of rigid binaries.




ARTWORKS

Bestioles	Creatures	Drawings
Pearl works	Sculptures	Wax works
EXHIBITIONS

Bruno Pélassy & the Order of the Starfish Haus Am Waldsee, Berlin 2023	Bruno Pélassy MAMCO, Geneva 2016	Tears Shared : Marc Camille Chaimowitz featuring Bruno Pélassy Flat Time House, London 2016
Bruno Pélassy Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine 2015	Bruno Pélassy La Passerelle, Brest 2015	Bruno Pélassy : Neo Laos MAMAC, Nice 2003