Neal Baer Collection

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

Exhibitions

Berlin, Haus am Waldsee, Bruno Pélassy and the Order of the Starfish, October 20, 2023 – January 14, 2024

See also

Bruno Pélassy at Air de Paris

Bruno Pélassy and the Order of the Starfish, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, October 20, 2023 – January 14, 2024

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)