The work of Bruno Pélassy (1966, Laos) spans a period of barely ten years. He died of AIDS in 2002 at the age of 36, leaving a body of work that is both tragic and burlesque, refined and lewd, marked by the death drive as much as by a poetic sense of wonder. Trained in fashion and jewelry design, Pélassy made jellyfish out of fabric. His Créatures undulate gently in the water—gems enclosed in Baroque-inspired transparent reliquaries—while his Bestioles, or bugs, crawled around disconcertingly. The retrospective occupied the whole of the fourth floor of the museum with some 100 pieces comprised of drawings, installations, sculptures, and a film. Pélassy was friends with artists such as Jean-Luc Verna, Natacha Lesueur, and Jean-Luc Blanc, who had studied at the Villa Arson art school in Nice and then had exhibitions at MAMCO. This exhibition is thus part of the museum’s interest in the Nice scene, from the formalism of the post-1968 Supports/
Surfaces artworks to the generation of artists who mix up art categories as much as sexual identities.