Bruno Pélassy

Bruno Pélassy

7 Feb — 2 May 2015

Bruno Pélassy is a multi-faceted artist—graphic artist, sculptor, dress designer and more.
He was born in 1966 in Vientiane, Laos, and died in Nice at the age of 36 from AIDS-related causes. He had contracted the disease in 1987 when he was barely 21 years old.

Sans titre, sang titre, cent titres is a singular artwork, be it in the history of video, experimental cinema or among art dealing with the disease. The work consists of a collage of images recorded from television, stolen and stitched from one video recorder to the next, governed by an emotional logic apparently devoid of any other meaning. Genre films, wildlife documentaries, television programmes, cartoons, series, silent movies, etc. The artist wove images and sequences together in keeping with the emotional progression of his own illness. The montage follows the logic of a progression which, though obeying the law of cause and effect, is not linear but more akin to rock climbing. The montage is jerky, rough, at times frenetic, yet sophisticated, playing on cuts and syncopation effects. Visual metaphors are drawn and leitmotifs punctuate the development of the text: an explosion in space, the car driving across Mount Hood from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), the face of Renée Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).

The work exists on VHS. This means that in order for it to be shown, every time the videotape is played, the physical medium is damaged and the image deteriorates, since magnetic tape is not a long-term storage medium. The marks of loss and destruction appear physically on the screen, sometimes to the point of invading it. Videotape, an evolving... [lire plus]

With the support of Bruno Pélassy's family and in association with the Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry - le Crédac, the Centre Régional d'Art contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon - Sète and the Mamco - Geneva.

An exhibition presenting a large corpus of Bruno Pélassy's work is on display at the Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry - le Crédac until 22 March 2015.