SYLVIE FLEURY, press release Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam, 1992
29,7 x 21 cm
ink jet print
inv.SF 000
During the time this press release came out her work was not yet contextualised and interpreted by critics as feministic. Quite a few visitors coming to her exhibition in the gallery commented: ‘Kees, this is not art, this is fashion!’
Sylvie Fleury says: ‘I’ve always been very interested in the mechanisms of desire — how objects elicit desire, and how brands create that sense of longing. These were things that felt really new when I started working in the 90s, when consumerism was really accelerating.’
Interview in iD by Mahoro Seward, 16 June, 2022
“Sylvie Fleury is extremely fascinated by fashion and everything that has to do with it. She is interested in actual fashion as well in fashion from e.g., the sixties. A lot of her work is used by her as complete or partial ‘ready-made’, but the cooler / rational pragmatism of e.g., American artists is not to be found in her work. She does not claim a priori a critical attitude such as artists like Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach and others do. Her work derives in the first place from an inner necessity to create an image that is essential to her and is full of actual elements of which meaning is more than unequivocal.
It is remarkable to see in this exhibition how the images of the world of existing things turn into autonomous artworks in spite of the strong recognizability of these existing things. For instance, the colourful fake fur on stretcher has a high degree of inviting to caress and therefore these artworks evoke a beautiful sensual gesture to the exhibition as a whole. The shoes on the floor emphasize once more this physical element of an exact fitting shoe that creates a feeling of well-being. In contrast to this element, one is confronted with her new GALERIE VAN GELDER EDITION set out all over the gallery, but at the same time these photographs are reproductions of fashion magazines she regularly reads with eagerness. Often this peculiar commitment can be traced in her works.”
Press release with the exhibition of Sylvie Fleury April 25 – June 3 1992