Bruno Pélassy - Air de Paris

WAX WORKS

A series of portraits and a landscape (1996) done in color pencil and covered in wax. Once cooled, the poured candle wax gives the paper material heft and translucency, lending the drawings something of the aspect of an icon. The portraits notably include the American actor Brad Davis, the protagonist of Midnight Express (Alan Parker, 1978) and Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982), who also appears in one of the film excerpts in Pélassy’s film Sans titre, Sang titre, Cent titres; and the English singer Kathleen Ferrier, known for her interpretation of Kindertotenlieder (or Songs on the Death of Children, from several of Friedrich Rückert’s group of poems on the theme which Gustav Mahler set to music). To immortalize his idols, Pélassy didn’t choose wax dummies but rather created an original form, the wax drawing.

Untitled
1996
Pencil on paper, paraffin wax, pigment
24 x 32 cm