Museum Exhibition
Sylvie Fleury Double Positive solo exhibition at Bechtler Foundation
8 October 2022—19 March 2023
The Bechtler Foundation, Uster
Sylvie Fleury's site-specific exhibition Double Positive is a reaction to the newly opened Bechtler Foundation building, which houses The 2000 Sculpture by Walter de Maria on permanent display. It is a place of contemplation that now faces a provocative and irritating encounter: Fleury's installation of countless clothes racks displaying her entire wardrobe over the past three decades.
The visitors are confronted with an exhibition situation that seems more like a warehouse or a fashion shop than a museum space. It raises the question of whether the recent residential and cultural development of the entire area, which includes several outdoor works of art, has returned to its former industrial use. A closer look reveals the opposite: the ordinary clothes racks gleam in gold and the items of clothing on display are extravagant. High-fashion pieces give an insight into the avant-garde of the 1990s, into the times of Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier. The accumulated relics of consumption turn out to be historical objects of museum value. The artist's book of the same name is part of the exhibition. Annotated by fashion historian Matthew Linde, it harks back to Fleury's beginnings as an artist and evokes her first work from 1991: a ready-made sculpture made up of shopping bags, unopened and filled with newly acquired luxury items. Archival portraits of the artist at work are as unusual as her "sculpture"; in her role as a consumer, she challenges the notion of the artist as a worker or producer.
The visitors are confronted with an exhibition situation that seems more like a warehouse or a fashion shop than a museum space. It raises the question of whether the recent residential and cultural development of the entire area, which includes several outdoor works of art, has returned to its former industrial use. A closer look reveals the opposite: the ordinary clothes racks gleam in gold and the items of clothing on display are extravagant. High-fashion pieces give an insight into the avant-garde of the 1990s, into the times of Thierry Mugler, Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier. The accumulated relics of consumption turn out to be historical objects of museum value. The artist's book of the same name is part of the exhibition. Annotated by fashion historian Matthew Linde, it harks back to Fleury's beginnings as an artist and evokes her first work from 1991: a ready-made sculpture made up of shopping bags, unopened and filled with newly acquired luxury items. Archival portraits of the artist at work are as unusual as her "sculpture"; in her role as a consumer, she challenges the notion of the artist as a worker or producer.
