Bruno Pélassy and the Order of the Starfish

Haus am Waldsee is pleased to present the first institutional exhibition in Germany of French artist Bruno Pélassy (b. 1966 in Vientiane, Laos, †2002 in Nice, France). Through formal and playful material excesses in sculpture, couture and jewelry, drawing, and film, the exhibition explores his practice as a personal and political examination of the conventions of desire, gender, values, and health, as well as an appeal for the dissolution of entrenched binaries.

Significantly influenced by an early HIV diagnosis, Pélassy's work reflects on the ambivalent dynamics of illness and death, as well as an understanding of the body as a porous, imponderable entity. In the exhibition, Pélassy's artistic approach enters into an exchange with selected artworks and ephemera by his contemporaries as well as artists working today. The group exhibition will include contributions by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Beth Collar, Jesse Darling, Brice Dellsperger, Leonor Fini, Ull Hohn, Natacha Lesueur, Jean Painlevé & Geneviève Hamon, James Richards, and Soshiro Matsubara, who will also develop the exhibition architecture.