Sylvie Fleury
Formula One Dress for Hugo Boss
September 10–October 2, 1999
Munich

Some art pieces tend somewhat to summarize the main ingredients of an artist's work. Sylvie Fleury's 'Formula One Dress for Hugo Boss' certainly wraps together many topics visited and discussed by the artist through much of her production that count as a seminal contribution to todays contemporary art forum these past years. The Dress, as an art object and as a dress, is emblematic of such investigations by Sylvie Fleury which focus among various fields on art as wrapping device, art as prosthesis, art as customizing processes, art as vehicle on cruise control to the Unknown and further on, recalls the questioning of gender identity and emblems by means of sexual accessorizing and fetishism and other such themes displayed in her works.

Technics of transfer, sampling or transcoding are a quite typical set in the contemporary language modus and Sylvie Fleury's strategies are very explicit about that cultural challenge. She will often use a given cultural product and restage all the deconstructed elements into a new intricate set on its new stage. The Fashion System has been almost obvious territory for her art, and she has been highly recognized for her works in that line since the early nineties. A point made clear in those series is how ikons are built to transport a message, whether it be significant or blank of any meaning, and introduce a reference point that cannot be avoided. The handling of these ikons, their marketing through advertising and media support create from nill an identity, framing then on a style, an aesthetic, a language. Western art uses similar paths, and Sylvie Fleury's work critically reports this parallel efficiently.