October 2001
Geometrical Affairs
New acquisitions and works from the collection
John Armleder
Josef Albers
Gottfried HoneggerCamille Graeser
Gail Haistings
Karin Sander
Sylvie Fleury
Sylvie Fleury
b.1961 in Geneva/CHZylon Painting, 1994
silver paint on canvas, 56 x 70 cmSylvie Fleury examines the 20th century artists who helped to shape a particular style, and repeats their works as playful quotations.
Zylon Painting shows a canvas sprayed beyond the edges with fashionable silver paint, in the manner of Jackson Pollock. Fleury nonchalantly mixes the sphere of male-dominated high art with the popular female environment. Thus the canvas looks more "made up" than "painted".
Finishing done by an assistant of Daimler Contemporary
Using a fashionable colour from a spray can gives the work a lighter but also a transient character and tones down the often hard signs of the male world, makes them a little more "frivolous". But a work like Untitled does show something else as well: the first 'action paintings' were an expression of aggressive protest, they wanted to change things. Repeated across the years, the gesture has become increasingly trivialized and modish.
