 Zen & Speed, 2001 Sylvie Fleury film and video retrospective "When Sylvie Fleury directs her artistic attention to the circulation of goods in the venous system of avant-garde women's fashions, we are confronted with an agenda as guileful as it is revealing. With disarming sophistication she stages the meeting and mixing of art and marketing technologies in the museum or gallery space.... Fleury's strategies address subcultures that are ordinarily foreign to art" (Bice Curiger, "Cosmetics and Cars", Parkett, issue 58, 2000). Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury has become a leading figure in contemporary art through her varied investigations into the simultaneously glamorous and gaudy worlds of fashion, shopping, sixties girl groups, muscle cars, and esotericism; playfully questioning the relationships between art and consumerism, the masculine and feminine, and class versus bad taste. In a variety of media, Fleury gleefully incorporates visual quotations from art history into her ready-mades, sculptures, photographs, and installations with obvious references to the work of major (and significantly) male Modern art stars such as Piet Mondrian, Carl Andre, John Chamberlain, and Jeff Koons. Fleury makes fashion and leisure interests more relevant, working with materials like high-heeled shoes and fake fur; selecting paint colours based on the season's most fashionable; emphasising the superficiality of her chosen subjects; and relishing in the glossy surfaces of cars, lipsticks, and magazines. It is all done with a wry sense of humour, and Fleury's sincerity and obsession are evident. "Just recontextualising something that's very superficial will give it a new depth. And sometimes, just being a woman and showing something - like a pair of shoes, a car, or a Carl Andre - gives it another dimension" (Sylvie Fleury in an interview with Peter Halley, Index Magazine, 2002). There is a lack of cynicism in her pieces, and for all the garishness in their appearance, there is a subtlety in the thinking behind them. Exhibition: September 22 - November 6 2004 Open to the public: Tue-Sat 10am - 5pm By reservation: Mon-Sat 7pm - 2am the gallery sketch 9 Conduit Street GB-London W1S 2XG Telephone +44 0870 770 6515 Fax +44 (0) 20 7629 1684 Email gallery@sketch.uk.com www.sketch.uk.com |
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