Sylvie Fleury, Swiss, b. 1961. Switzerland

Lives and works in Geneva.

Subversively taking on capitalist aesthetics through a distinctly feminized lens, her work examines the intersection of popular and high culture.
After shopping one day, Fleury stopped at an art gallery, and when she set her armful of bags on the floor and claimed them as sculptures. From thereon she began her exploration of the ready-made, often in the form of a crossover between fashion and art such as other nontraditional mediums like motorcycles and vinyl banners long before the more recent trend towards collaborations with brands. The commodification of beauty and wellness is rendered in slick, highly produced objects d’art with human-scale makeup palettes and neon signs expressing state-of-the-art aphorisms appropriated from perfume brands.
As she also employs a world of atypical textures like faux fur, she directly confronts the art historical precedent of monochromatic painted squares for which male artists in the 20th century were glorified. Fleury looks at the marketization of the art world while challenging the space of the gallery and the very process of consuming art.

 

INSTALLATION VIEW FROM TIVOLI GARDENS IN COPENHAGNE, 2023, SPACESHIP TO VENUS