SYLVIE FLEURY
SHAME
September 11 to October 31, 2020
Sylvie Fleury. SHAME
It seems as if it’s the first time Sylvie Fleury enters an artworkherself.Enormous blob-like inflatables based on the artist’s personalized Bitmoji dominate her recent exhibitions, as well as her upcoming solo show at Mehdi Chouakri Gallery in Berlin. Rather than an alluring slogan drawn from perfume branding, such as Obsession, Escape, Joy, Envy andEternity Now, the three-dimensional artist portrait on view in Berlin carries “SHAME” in bold logo-like typeface. All of a sudden, we are confronted with the artist’s persona—or at least we are told so. Escaping the smartphone screen, the artist’s avatar comes to life as a festival prop, while the brutality of its enlargement makes you forget the cutesy effect of Bitmoji-texting. Thinking about Fleury’s oeuvre sheds light on a contradiction. The work is full of personification. Her shopping bag readymades imply that she is obsessed with shopping, yet in hindsight we wonder whether we might have been blinded by an orchestrated camouflage. Does she really like shopping? Are we really confronted with hercollection of high heels and herFord Cosworth from 1969? In preparation for this essay, I went back to the artist’s books and catalogues in my library and while studying them, I started to understand that she never reveals herself as an image or by using her own voice. Instead, Fleury subverts the tradition of the artist portrait by using surrogates: readymades, such as high heels, cars, shopping bags and furniture, divert attention from the void that confronts us. There is no human soul at work,one could argue.
The genesis of Sylvie Fleury as an artist dates back to the early 1990’s—the heyday of postmodernism, where the role of the artist enjoyed a surprising resurrection. As critics of late capitalist society—Maurizio Lazzarato, Frederic Jameson, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, to name a few—point out, the artist takes on an avant-garde position (again), albeit instrumentalized since there is no longer a “bohemian outside”—Yes To All.1With the rise of network capital2and the growing communication industry, the immaterial labour of conceptual art was at the forefront and defined a role model for new economic standards of labor. Subjectivity took on a new significance, as Lazzaroto claims: “The new slogan of Western societies is that we should all become subjects.”3In an age of information, the notion of work underwent a radical change: production was now regarded as handling information. In 1991 Tiqqun published Premiers Matériaux pour une Théorie de la jeune fille—a theoretical analysis of generic subjectivity solely defined who by consumerism. It is a persiflage on the “lifelongstruggle of rendering oneself compatible with Empire.”4In the 2000s the concept of the avatar entered the art world with the construction of such fictional artists as Claire Fontaine, Reena Spaulings or John Dogg. Perhaps this phenomena of the Readymade Artist5offered a subversive means of playing with the oppressive mechanisms of controlling subjectivity. A fake identity can’t be subsumed by societal authorities. According to my reading Sylvie Fleury is a Readymade Artistavant-la-lettre. Her voice asserting Be Amazing6is the one of the young girl saying: I want people to be beautiful7.And now—two decades later—when the promise of the once new millennial avant-garde has long faded and the avatar’s potential has been entombed in the grave of commodification in a Bitmoji application—de-sexualized like the jeune fille—Sylvie Fleury’s inflatables are a memento mori of authentic subjectivity.
— Niels Olsen
3 Maurizio Lazzarato, Immaterial Labor, in: Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (ed.), Radical Thought in Italy, Minneapolis 1996, p. 134.
4 Tiqqun,Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Los Angeles 2007. (English Translation)
5 Claire Fontaine / John Kelsey, Interview,http://brocblegen.com/collection/Artists/Claire%20Fontaine/Interview%20with%20John%20Kelsey.pdf
Let me do it Felix, 2020
Fiberglass, car paint, hoodie
92 x 57 x 31 cm / 36.2 x 22.4 x 12.2 in
For her latest series of works, Sylvie Fleury combines elements of mannequins with objects from the world of fashion and everyday life. The legs, hands and arms of the female mannequins are covered with special car paint, which has its origins in the American custom car scene of the 1990s and is arranged as a wall object with a special attribute.
Let me do it Felix consists of lilac-colored crossed legs, over which Fleury has thrown a poison-green sweater by the design studio Acne. The soft, velvety texture of the sweater stands in stark contrast to the high-gloss surface of the lacquered mannequin and lends the entire installation a defining tactile quality that can be understood with the eye. The designer garment originates from a shopping trip of the artist and shows once again that with Sylvie Fleury the boundaries between personal life and art always remain unclear.
Single Stack (Purple), 2020
Stainless steel, polished, polyurethane foam, fiberglass, car paint
34 x 86,5 x 60 cm / 13.4 x 34 x 23.6 in
Since the 1990s, Sylvie Fleury has been dealing with works by male artists and reinterpreting them through her own formal language. In this way, Donald Judd's iconic "stacks", which now serve as shelves, are also overlaid by Sylvie Fleury's amorphous forms, creating a kind of Yin and Yang between masculinity and femininity that can be read in different directions. The amorphous-feminine bodies counteract the strict masculine geometry of the "stacks" and thus let their cool masculinity run into void. Between the hard edges of minimalism and the added elements that flow around them, a field of tension is created that, through the mirroring and reflecting surfaces, involves both the space and the viewer.
Single Stack (Pink), 2020
Stainless steel, polished, polyurethane foam, fiberglass, car paint
34 x 75 x 73,5 cm / 13.4 x 29.5 x 28.9 in
Since the 1990s, Sylvie Fleury has been dealing with works by male artists and reinterpreting them through her own formal language. In this way, Donald Judd's iconic "stacks", which now serve as shelves, are also overlaid by Sylvie Fleury's amorphous forms, creating a kind of Yin and Yang between masculinity and femininity that can be read in different directions. The amorphous-feminine bodies counteract the strict masculine geometry of the "stacks" and thus let their cool masculinity run into void. Between the hard edges of minimalism and the added elements that flow around them, a field of tension is created that, through the mirroring and reflecting surfaces, involves both the space and the viewer.
Bye Bye Undereye (Peach), 2019
Acrylic on canvas
65 x 65 cm / 25.6 x 25.6 in
In this group of works, Sylvie Fleury shows shaped canvases that refer in form and color to compact make-ups and abstract through extreme shifts in scale. These larger-than-life symbols of contemporary vanity hang like black mirrors on the wall, promising transformation for their consumers and suggesting that art and objects of desire are often synonymous. The use of form, structure and color reflects rules and principles used in Minimalism, Pop Art and the Light and Space movement. Fleury has long been interested in how the makeup industry works and researches. According to Fleury, the qualities that the cosmetics industry takes into account when developing a product are not unlike those that an artist might consider when creating a new work. But while make-up is removed at night, art is supposed to exist for eternity. The extreme magnification of the actually small objects emphasizes their attractiveness, revealing nuances of color that the model is unable to reveal. Here Fleury explores the limits of painting and plays with the two great possibilities of representation, abstraction and figuration, as Donald Judd already attempted with his specific objects.
Légèreté et expérience, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 120 cm / 47.2 x 47.2 in
In this group of works, Sylvie Fleury shows shaped canvases that refer in form and color to compact make-ups and abstract through extreme shifts in scale. These larger-than-life symbols of contemporary vanity hang like black mirrors on the wall, promising transformation for their consumers and suggesting that art and objects of desire are often synonymous. The use of form, structure and color reflects rules and principles used in Minimalism, Pop Art and the Light and Space movement. Fleury has long been interested in how the makeup industry works and researches. According to Fleury, the qualities that the cosmetics industry takes into account when developing a product are not unlike those that an artist might consider when creating a new work. But while make-up is removed at night, art is supposed to exist for eternity. The extreme magnification of the actually small objects emphasizes their attractiveness, revealing nuances of color that the model is unable to reveal. Here Fleury explores the limits of painting and plays with the two great possibilities of representation, abstraction and figuration, as Donald Judd already attempted with his specific objects.
Let me do it Bob, 2020
Fiberglass, car paint, metal chain
78 x 27,5 x 24,5 cm / 30.7 x 10.8 x 9.6 in
For her latest series of works, Sylvie Fleury combines elements of mannequins with objects from the world of fashion and everyday life. The legs, hands and arms of the female mannequins are covered with special car paint, which has its origins in the American custom car scene of the 1990s and is arranged as a wall object with a special attribute.
The installation Let me do it Bob consists of a pair of orange-metallic painted female hands wearing a heavy metal chain. It seems as if the chain is presented or even handed over to the viewer, thus breaking through the fourth wall. Unlike the other works in the series, the fashion reference disappears here. The link chain can be read both as a reference to concrete uses in everyday life, such as securing or protecting, and as a reference to the fetish world that has occupied Fleury since the beginning of her career.
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey 1, 1997
10 paper tissues, typewriter ink, framed
21 x 29,5 cm / 8.2 x 11.6 in
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey is an early text-based concept work that Sylvie Fleury realized in Berlin in 1997. On view are handkerchiefs typed with texts and framed in the style of the 1960s. The short forum entries, which Fleury typed with a typewriter and thus transferred to the analog, originate from an Internet forum in which users called films in which actresses wear fur. The work is considered one of the earliest to deal with the Internet and its users and shows that Fleury's conceptual approach also works without visual accompaniment. At the same time, it refers in form and presentation to text-based works of conceptual art. The work was created in 1997 at Mehdi Chouakri gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Bedroom Ensemble and was created by the artist on an "Erika" typewriter. Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey has also been shown in exhibitions at Villa Stuck, Munich, MAMCO, Geneva and at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble.
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey 2, 1997
10 paper tissues, typewriter ink, framed
21 x 29,5 cm / 8.2 x 11.6 in
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey is an early text-based concept work that Sylvie Fleury realized in Berlin in 1997. On view are handkerchiefs typed with texts and framed in the style of the 1960s. The short forum entries, which Fleury typed with a typewriter and thus transferred to the analog, originate from an Internet forum in which users called films in which actresses wear fur. The work is considered one of the earliest to deal with the Internet and its users and shows that Fleury's conceptual approach also works without visual accompaniment. At the same time, it refers in form and presentation to text-based works of conceptual art. The work was created in 1997 at Mehdi Chouakri gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Bedroom Ensemble and was created by the artist on an "Erika" typewriter. Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey has also been shown in exhibitions at Villa Stuck, Munich, MAMCO, Geneva and at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble.
SYLVIE FLEURY
SHAME
September 11 to October 31, 2020
Sylvie Fleury. SHAME
It seems as if it’s the first time Sylvie Fleury enters an artworkherself.Enormous blob-like inflatables based on the artist’s personalized Bitmoji dominate her recent exhibitions, as well as her upcoming solo show at Mehdi Chouakri Gallery in Berlin. Rather than an alluring slogan drawn from perfume branding, such as Obsession, Escape, Joy, Envy andEternity Now, the three-dimensional artist portrait on view in Berlin carries “SHAME” in bold logo-like typeface. All of a sudden, we are confronted with the artist’s persona—or at least we are told so. Escaping the smartphone screen, the artist’s avatar comes to life as a festival prop, while the brutality of its enlargement makes you forget the cutesy effect of Bitmoji-texting. Thinking about Fleury’s oeuvre sheds light on a contradiction. The work is full of personification. Her shopping bag readymades imply that she is obsessed with shopping, yet in hindsight we wonder whether we might have been blinded by an orchestrated camouflage. Does she really like shopping? Are we really confronted with hercollection of high heels and herFord Cosworth from 1969? In preparation for this essay, I went back to the artist’s books and catalogues in my library and while studying them, I started to understand that she never reveals herself as an image or by using her own voice. Instead, Fleury subverts the tradition of the artist portrait by using surrogates: readymades, such as high heels, cars, shopping bags and furniture, divert attention from the void that confronts us. There is no human soul at work,one could argue.
The genesis of Sylvie Fleury as an artist dates back to the early 1990’s—the heyday of postmodernism, where the role of the artist enjoyed a surprising resurrection. As critics of late capitalist society—Maurizio Lazzarato, Frederic Jameson, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, to name a few—point out, the artist takes on an avant-garde position (again), albeit instrumentalized since there is no longer a “bohemian outside”—Yes To All.1With the rise of network capital2and the growing communication industry, the immaterial labour of conceptual art was at the forefront and defined a role model for new economic standards of labor. Subjectivity took on a new significance, as Lazzaroto claims: “The new slogan of Western societies is that we should all become subjects.”3In an age of information, the notion of work underwent a radical change: production was now regarded as handling information. In 1991 Tiqqun published Premiers Matériaux pour une Théorie de la jeune fille—a theoretical analysis of generic subjectivity solely defined who by consumerism. It is a persiflage on the “lifelongstruggle of rendering oneself compatible with Empire.”4In the 2000s the concept of the avatar entered the art world with the construction of such fictional artists as Claire Fontaine, Reena Spaulings or John Dogg. Perhaps this phenomena of the Readymade Artist5offered a subversive means of playing with the oppressive mechanisms of controlling subjectivity. A fake identity can’t be subsumed by societal authorities. According to my reading Sylvie Fleury is a Readymade Artistavant-la-lettre. Her voice asserting Be Amazing6is the one of the young girl saying: I want people to be beautiful7.And now—two decades later—when the promise of the once new millennial avant-garde has long faded and the avatar’s potential has been entombed in the grave of commodification in a Bitmoji application—de-sexualized like the jeune fille—Sylvie Fleury’s inflatables are a memento mori of authentic subjectivity.
— Niels Olsen
3 Maurizio Lazzarato, Immaterial Labor, in: Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (ed.), Radical Thought in Italy, Minneapolis 1996, p. 134.
4 Tiqqun,Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Los Angeles 2007. (English Translation)
5 Claire Fontaine / John Kelsey, Interview,http://brocblegen.com/collection/Artists/Claire%20Fontaine/Interview%20with%20John%20Kelsey.pdf
Let me do it Felix, 2020
Fiberglass, car paint, hoodie
92 x 57 x 31 cm / 36.2 x 22.4 x 12.2 in
For her latest series of works, Sylvie Fleury combines elements of mannequins with objects from the world of fashion and everyday life. The legs, hands and arms of the female mannequins are covered with special car paint, which has its origins in the American custom car scene of the 1990s and is arranged as a wall object with a special attribute.
Let me do it Felix consists of lilac-colored crossed legs, over which Fleury has thrown a poison-green sweater by the design studio Acne. The soft, velvety texture of the sweater stands in stark contrast to the high-gloss surface of the lacquered mannequin and lends the entire installation a defining tactile quality that can be understood with the eye. The designer garment originates from a shopping trip of the artist and shows once again that with Sylvie Fleury the boundaries between personal life and art always remain unclear.
Single Stack (Purple), 2020
Stainless steel, polished, polyurethane foam, fiberglass, car paint
34 x 86,5 x 60 cm / 13.4 x 34 x 23.6 in
Since the 1990s, Sylvie Fleury has been dealing with works by male artists and reinterpreting them through her own formal language. In this way, Donald Judd's iconic "stacks", which now serve as shelves, are also overlaid by Sylvie Fleury's amorphous forms, creating a kind of Yin and Yang between masculinity and femininity that can be read in different directions. The amorphous-feminine bodies counteract the strict masculine geometry of the "stacks" and thus let their cool masculinity run into void. Between the hard edges of minimalism and the added elements that flow around them, a field of tension is created that, through the mirroring and reflecting surfaces, involves both the space and the viewer.
Single Stack (Pink), 2020
Stainless steel, polished, polyurethane foam, fiberglass, car paint
34 x 75 x 73,5 cm / 13.4 x 29.5 x 28.9 in
Since the 1990s, Sylvie Fleury has been dealing with works by male artists and reinterpreting them through her own formal language. In this way, Donald Judd's iconic "stacks", which now serve as shelves, are also overlaid by Sylvie Fleury's amorphous forms, creating a kind of Yin and Yang between masculinity and femininity that can be read in different directions. The amorphous-feminine bodies counteract the strict masculine geometry of the "stacks" and thus let their cool masculinity run into void. Between the hard edges of minimalism and the added elements that flow around them, a field of tension is created that, through the mirroring and reflecting surfaces, involves both the space and the viewer.
Bye Bye Undereye (Peach), 2019
Acrylic on canvas
65 x 65 cm / 25.6 x 25.6 in
In this group of works, Sylvie Fleury shows shaped canvases that refer in form and color to compact make-ups and abstract through extreme shifts in scale. These larger-than-life symbols of contemporary vanity hang like black mirrors on the wall, promising transformation for their consumers and suggesting that art and objects of desire are often synonymous. The use of form, structure and color reflects rules and principles used in Minimalism, Pop Art and the Light and Space movement. Fleury has long been interested in how the makeup industry works and researches. According to Fleury, the qualities that the cosmetics industry takes into account when developing a product are not unlike those that an artist might consider when creating a new work. But while make-up is removed at night, art is supposed to exist for eternity. The extreme magnification of the actually small objects emphasizes their attractiveness, revealing nuances of color that the model is unable to reveal. Here Fleury explores the limits of painting and plays with the two great possibilities of representation, abstraction and figuration, as Donald Judd already attempted with his specific objects.
Légèreté et expérience, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 120 cm / 47.2 x 47.2 in
In this group of works, Sylvie Fleury shows shaped canvases that refer in form and color to compact make-ups and abstract through extreme shifts in scale. These larger-than-life symbols of contemporary vanity hang like black mirrors on the wall, promising transformation for their consumers and suggesting that art and objects of desire are often synonymous. The use of form, structure and color reflects rules and principles used in Minimalism, Pop Art and the Light and Space movement. Fleury has long been interested in how the makeup industry works and researches. According to Fleury, the qualities that the cosmetics industry takes into account when developing a product are not unlike those that an artist might consider when creating a new work. But while make-up is removed at night, art is supposed to exist for eternity. The extreme magnification of the actually small objects emphasizes their attractiveness, revealing nuances of color that the model is unable to reveal. Here Fleury explores the limits of painting and plays with the two great possibilities of representation, abstraction and figuration, as Donald Judd already attempted with his specific objects.
Let me do it Bob, 2020
Fiberglass, car paint, metal chain
78 x 27,5 x 24,5 cm / 30.7 x 10.8 x 9.6 in
For her latest series of works, Sylvie Fleury combines elements of mannequins with objects from the world of fashion and everyday life. The legs, hands and arms of the female mannequins are covered with special car paint, which has its origins in the American custom car scene of the 1990s and is arranged as a wall object with a special attribute.
The installation Let me do it Bob consists of a pair of orange-metallic painted female hands wearing a heavy metal chain. It seems as if the chain is presented or even handed over to the viewer, thus breaking through the fourth wall. Unlike the other works in the series, the fashion reference disappears here. The link chain can be read both as a reference to concrete uses in everyday life, such as securing or protecting, and as a reference to the fetish world that has occupied Fleury since the beginning of her career.
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey 2, 1997
10 paper tissues, typewriter ink, framed
21 x 29,5 cm / 8.2 x 11.6 in
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey is an early text-based concept work that Sylvie Fleury realized in Berlin in 1997. On view are handkerchiefs typed with texts and framed in the style of the 1960s. The short forum entries, which Fleury typed with a typewriter and thus transferred to the analog, originate from an Internet forum in which users called films in which actresses wear fur. The work is considered one of the earliest to deal with the Internet and its users and shows that Fleury's conceptual approach also works without visual accompaniment. At the same time, it refers in form and presentation to text-based works of conceptual art. The work was created in 1997 at Mehdi Chouakri gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Bedroom Ensemble and was created by the artist on an "Erika" typewriter. Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey has also been shown in exhibitions at Villa Stuck, Munich, MAMCO, Geneva and at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble.
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey 2, 1997
10 paper tissues, typewriter ink, framed
21 x 29,5 cm / 8.2 x 11.6 in
Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey is an early text-based concept work that Sylvie Fleury realized in Berlin in 1997. On view are handkerchiefs typed with texts and framed in the style of the 1960s. The short forum entries, which Fleury typed with a typewriter and thus transferred to the analog, originate from an Internet forum in which users called films in which actresses wear fur. The work is considered one of the earliest to deal with the Internet and its users and shows that Fleury's conceptual approach also works without visual accompaniment. At the same time, it refers in form and presentation to text-based works of conceptual art. The work was created in 1997 at Mehdi Chouakri gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Bedroom Ensemble and was created by the artist on an "Erika" typewriter. Fur Fetish, The Silver Screen Survey has also been shown in exhibitions at Villa Stuck, Munich, MAMCO, Geneva and at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble.