Bruno Pélassy

“In 1987, while finishing his training as a tailor, Bruno Pélassy was living in a studio apartment in Paris, amidst dark clutter and a cascade of needles, lace and fur that his mother used to bring him from Nice. On his cathode-ray television, his VHS tapes played on repeat: The Exorcist (1973), Female Trouble (1974), and The Law of the Strongest (1975). Sometimes he would turn the volume down to play his vinyl records along with the images: “Madame Butterfly” by Malcolm McLaren (1984), the recording of Ingrid Caven at Le Pigall’s (1978), anything by Madonna. On a pine shelf, a Chanel perfume bag and the beginnings of a library: La Nuit juste avant les forêts (1977), Dans la solitude des champs de coton (1985) and Le Retour au désert (1988). Like Koltès, the author of these books, Pelassy was gay, born into a Catholic family, with a military father and a housewife mother.” As it turns out from the words of Baptiste Pinteaux, throughout his life Bruno Pélassy embodied a multifaceted and gleaming persona, one of a rampant collector whose subversive and sensual oeuvre rejects pigeonholing. His work, which spans over a decade (1990s–2000s), range from sculptures and bijoux to drawings and films, incorporating motifs from both haute couture and the second-hand cultures of a throwaway society, addressing both the issues of adornment and those of technology.