Sylvie Fleury

The works of the Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury (*1961 Geneva, CH) draw their inspiration from the world of fashion, glamour and modern consumerism. Fleury uses her creations to depict the stereotypical luxury of consumer society while giving an ironic twist to gender clichés at the same time. Not without critique, she addresses the material surface of the subjects in order to fundamentally change their appearance through a process of product modification and realign personal expectations. Many of her pieces consist of technical objects or status symbols like machines, cars and rockets which Fleury overlays with materials or colours connoting feminine characteristics. In this way, the sculpture Ford Cosworth DFV turns an eight-cylinder engine from the British manufacturer Cosworth into a highly polished, chrome-plated object, presented as a ready-made. Fleury sets a female-inspired object world against a male-dominated art scene, thus creating a jarring mix of apparent contradictions.