The new temporary exhibition programme of Pinacoteca opens with a solo show by Sylvie Fleury entitled Turn Me On. Conceived and produced with the artist specifically for the spaces of Pinacoteca, the exhibition features both existing works and new commissions, in an immersive path exploring the main themes of her research. The project represents Fleury’s most extensive exhibition in Italy to date, and marks a milestone in her thirty-year-long artistic career, influential both to contemporary art history and to emerging practices.
Since the late 1980s, Fleury’s approach has included video, sculpture, neon, painting, sound and performance, often combined in environmental installations that incorporate new and previous works in a cohesive project. Fleury’s eclectic production has been alternately associated with various artistic movements, without fully belonging to any of them. Materials and languages such as Pop Art appropriation and the aesthetics of Minimalism are exaggerated, distorted or disguised by the artist, resulting in a sharp critique of the historical and political context in which these currents emerged. The questioning of the paradigms of Western art history, such as the idealisation of the male artist and art’s complicity with the dynamics of consumerism, have led critics to see in Fleury’s work the influence of post-feminist thought and Institutional Critique.
A ‘punk feminist in disguise’, as she calls herself, Fleury confronts the mechanisms of the production of desire and construction of value, and how they interact with gender politics. Objects, symbols and imageries from the fields of fashion, cinema, pop subcultures, Formula 1 racing, science fiction and contemporary art are absorbed into Fleury’s visual vocabulary and employed to construct unexpected narratives. The result is the creation of seductive and radical images that question gender stereotypes promoted by mass culture and art history in order to transform them into weapons.
