Bruno Pélassy
Sceptre
1992-93
Glass beads, tassels, rock crystal, wire
19.69 x 2.76 x 9.06 in; 50 x 7 x 23 cm
Courtesy of the Estate of Bruno Pélassy and Air de Paris, Paris
Bruno Pélassy (b. 1966, Laos; d. 2002, Nice) trained and worked as a textile and jewelry designer before he befriended artists associated with the Villa Arson in Nice and started to make artwork in the early 1990s. Pélassy used DIY, craft, and kitsch manners of construction to create his bead-encrusted, reliquary-like objects, aquarium “creatures”, and little animatronic “critters” with an aesthetic “oscillating between the tragic and the burlesque, the eccentric and the refined, the elegant and the obscene, the meticulous and the precarious.” Diagnosed with HIV in the late 1980s, Pelassy’s work reflects “an understanding of the body as a porous and erratic entity.”
Sceptre is part of the Perles series of intricately composed sculptures made of glass beads, glass, crystals, and metal. Often these sculptures take a phallic form and otherwise are fantastical headpieces and body ornaments.
Provenance
Air de Paris
See also
Bruno Pélassy, 55 Walker, curated by Nick Irvin, November 9 – December 8, 2018
Bruno Pélassy, Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, January 16 – March 22, 2015
Bruno Pélassy, MAMCO, Geneva, February 24 – May 1, 2016
Bruno Pélassy, Passarelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest, February 7 – May 2, 2015
Bruno Pélassy, Air de Paris, Paris, March 28 – May 14, 2015
Bruno Pelassy, Air de Paris, Paris, January 9 – February 26, 2005
Marnie Weber “Once Upon a Time in Forevermore”, Mousse Magazine (April 14, 2016)