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Lot Essay
Comprising a gold-plated trolley on a rotating aluminium pedestal, Sylvie Fleury’s Plumpity … Plump (2000) enshrines the act of shopping in a precious relic. The trolley’s clear Plexiglas handle is painted with the playful slogan ‘Plumpity … Plump.’ Fascinated by the depths and surfaces of fashion and its relationship with art, Fleury makes defiantly feminine work that is infused with a space-age sensuality and sense of fun, often involving physical interaction. At the 1991 Cologne Art Fair, she displayed 100 bottles of Egoïste perfume in small Chanel bags – every single one was stolen on the show’s opening night. The trolley can also be seen in relation to her 1992 exhibit of shopping bags on the floor at Postmaster Gallery in New York. ‘There was no point in just redoing a readymade,’ Fleury recalls. ‘I liked the idea that the work could be completely superficial. There was also the idea of seduction, the idea of brands, names, labels, and all this stuff that was very present in the late ’80s. I also liked that the work was abstract, in that when you looked at the shopping bags, their contents were hidden and you couldn’t quite know what was in them’ (S. Fleury, quoted in P. Halley, ‘Sylvie Fleury,’ Index No. 33, April 2002). Revolving on its platform like a car in a showroom, Plumpity … Plump similarly entices the viewer to sensory engagement with a triumphantly empty spectacle, transcending traditional fine art prerogatives to luxuriate in the gleaming delights of consumerism.