Collection Highlights
Sylvie Fleury Switzerland, b. 1961
Through her subversive and irreverent multidisciplinary practice, Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury (b.1961) considers the intersection of art, feminism and the fetishisation of consumer goods. In this sculpture, a pair of crossed women’s legs coloured with lustrous automotive paint protrude from a wall, while a chrome-coloured jacket rests on their lap. Its title borrows from a 1969 Rolling Stones song about infatuation, You Got the Silver, while its form directly references Secretary, a 1972 sculpture by British pop artist Allen Jones, which comprises three similar pairs of pastel-coloured legs. Jones’s work in the 1960s and 1970s was denounced by many for objectifying women’s bodies. Fleury wittily accentuates the criticism, aligning her shiny painted legs with cars – one of the ultimate objects of materialistic male desire. In so doing, she holds a mirror to systemic cultural values, asking what it might mean for a woman artist to commodify the female form.
Exhibitions
London, Sprüth Magers, Sylvie Fleury: S.F., September – November 2023