ÉGOÏSTE. Thirteen bright neon works that read the French word are mounted at different heights on the walls of the gallery’s storefront exhibition space.

Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

 

Fleury’s artistic practice has been exploring the intersections between art, fashion, beauty, pop culture, motorsports and science fiction since the early 1990s. She utilizes the unmistakable visual language of these arenas and draws on their aesthetics and phenomena to examine desire in all its forms, while also radically questioning the paradigms of art history and its male-dominated canon of modernism.

With Égoïste (2023), Fleury explores the creation of identity and a question that resurfaces throughout her work: how do we define ourselves? As is so often the case, she chooses a trenchant motif that allows viewers to find their own answers.

 

Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

Sylvie Fleury
Egoïste, 2023
Neon, white
17.6 × 100 cm | 7 × 39 3/8 inches
Edition of 24 + 2 AP

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Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

Sylvie Fleury
Egoïste, 2023
Neon, white
17.6 × 100 cm | 7 × 39 3/8 inches
Edition of 24 + 2 AP

Sylvie Fleury
Egoïste, 2023
Neon, white
17.6 × 100 cm | 7 × 39 3/8 inches
Edition of 24 + 2 AP

Details
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Égoïste (2023) draws on the lettering of an eponymous Chanel fragrance, explicitly “Pour Homme,” and represents one of the first logos that Fleury used for her works.

 

Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

Sylvie Fleury, Shoplifters from Venus, installation view, Kunst Museum Winterthur, 2023

Take, for example, an installation of multiple shopping bags emblazoned with the term, arranged on a table (Égoïste, 1991/2023) or a wall painting in which the word shimmered luxuriously (Égoïste, 1996).

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Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

Sylvie Fleury, Shoplifters from Venus, installation view, Kunst Museum Winterthur, 2023

Take, for example, an installation of multiple shopping bags emblazoned with the term, arranged on a table (Égoïste, 1991/2023) or a wall painting in which the word shimmered luxuriously (Égoïste, 1996).

The Chanel perfume campaign stages the egoistic as a positive masculine quality whose “seductive power” awakens female desire. Intended to circumscribe the wearer—give him a title—the logo, out of context, is charged with ambivalence and becomes either an insult or an admission of an obsession with the self.

Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

Sylvie Fleury, S.F., installation view, Sprüth Magers, London, 2023

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Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

Sylvie Fleury, S.F., installation view, Sprüth Magers, London, 2023

The Chanel perfume campaign stages the egoistic as a positive masculine quality whose “seductive power” awakens female desire. Intended to circumscribe the wearer—give him a title—the logo, out of context, is charged with ambivalence and becomes either an insult or an admission of an obsession with the self.

Sylvie Fleury – Égoïste – Berlin

All installation views: Timo Ohler