Haus am Waldsee is pleased to present the first institutional exhibition of French artist Bruno Pélassy (b. 1966 in Vientiane, Laos, d. 2002 in Nice, France) in Germany. Through formal and playful material excesses in sculpture, couture and jewelry, drawing and film, the exhibition explores his practice as both a personal and political contention of the conventions of desire, nature, gender, value and health, and a suit for the dissolution of fixed binaries.
A photograph captures Bruno Pélassy, freshly emerged from the deep blue of Nice’s Coco Beach, wearing a starfish like a living brooch on his chest, consigning him to some secret maritime order. Laura Cottingham, curator and close friend of Pélassy, remembers his fascination with ‘the blurred distinction between plant and animal that exists so obviously in the sea, as if it offered a perfect metaphor for the philosophical limits of all binary distinctions: good and evil, male and female, night and day, black and white’. [1]
Significantly influenced by an early diagnosis of HIV, Pélassy’s work reflects upon the ambivalent poetics of illness and death, and the understanding of the body as a porous and erratic entity. In the exhibition, Pélassy’s artistic approach will rub shoulders with selected artworks and ephemera by his contemporaries as well as artists working now. The group show element will include contributions by, amongst others, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Beth Collar, Jesse Darling, Brice Dellsperger, Leonor Fini, James Richards and Soshiro Matsubara, who will also develop the architecture for the exhibition.
[1] Laura Cottingham, ‘Remembering Bruno Pélassy’, in ‘Bruno Pélassy’ (Nice: Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, 2003), p. 32.
The exhibition is supported by:
Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt
Phileas. The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art
Between Bridges
Haus am Waldsee – Freunde und Förderer e.V.
Haus am Waldsee
Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin
