Sylvie Fleury Pink Explosion, 2018

Since her Shopping Bags readymade sculptures from the 1990s, appropriating and recontextualising luxury consumer items has been a recurring theme in the work of Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury. Her signature makeup palettes question the fetishisation of brands, the structures of desire and power attached to commodities, and the fleeting nature of value in contemporary society. Pink Explosion (2018) refers to the iconic Chanel blush by the same name. The artist intensifies the pink and removes the brush and branding to create a simplified version of the blush palette which, along with her use of a shaped canvas, evokes the formal language of Minimalism. In so doing, she provides a feminist counterpoint to the paradigm defined by the 1964 all-male group exhibition, The Shaped Canvas, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Painting by hand, Fleury achieves the smooth lines and surfaces of factory-manufactured goods through meticulously executed brushwork. At the same time, her process mimics the ritualistic application of makeup, commenting on the pursuit of the ‘perfect finish’.