YES TO ALL

Sylvie Fleury (Geneva, 1961)
Collection: Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville et du Canton de Genève (FMAC and FCAC), Neon Parallax project

In her artistic practice, Sylvie Fleury unashamedly intermixes many disparate references, offering a lucid, ironic perspective on female consumerism and hedonism. The specificity of her work is based on the reuse of existing objects – like cars, make-up or manufactured objects – and on their transformation into esthetic objects. The slogans of fashion and advertising are no exception. Decontextualized, they become mantras of wellbeing and personal fulfilment. For the Plaine de Plainpalais, Sylvie Fleury diverted commercial neon to offer an enthusiastic affirmation, a positive message that is about, and for, everyone: YES TO ALL. Is it a nose-thumbing at rampant consumption or a blissful, carefree acceptance of the same? The phrase YES TO ALL asserts its paradoxical ambiguity. With its assertive typography, its capital letters, this slogan, offered as an alternative to the promises of the market, also parodies the expressions of conceptual art, which has made language into an esthetic material. The sign made of colored light also evokes a kind of mystical chant, a call for happiness tinged with a spiritual aura.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham

Links:  http://www.ville-ge.ch/culture/neons/
www.p3art.ch