Bruno Pelassy (1966-2002) trained in textile and jewellery design, and worked for Swarovski early in his career. In the traumatic context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s (he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1987), and gravitating around a generation of artists close to having studied at the Villa Arson school and art centre in Nice, Bruno Pelassy produced works at once fragile and flamboyant: in his oeuvre, DIY approaches mingle with the meticulous work of glass and crystal, and painstakingly crafted jewellery appears alongside cheap mechanical bugs to produce an aesthetic of the marvellous and the precarious.