Taking their cues from the worlds of fashion and advertising, her abstract and text-based canvases are as much about the exclusive macho codes of painting as the fixating allure of surface. Her lush Untitled splatter compositions, reminiscent of Pollock’s drizzles, explode in a barrage of Maybelline colours: set against black backgrounds, bursts of concealer beige and eye shadow blue decimate the boundaries between seduction and violence; while in other works, Daniel Buren and Lucio Fontana are each given makeovers: their pop abstractions appropriated and hilariously feminised (or more appropriately, vagazzled). With text paintings from her Miniskirts Are Back series – their fashionista manifesto typeset in horror movie script, emblazoned in cosmetic gloss sheen – Warhol-esque screen prints of Sweet and Low packages, and cuddly fake fur minimalist effigies, Fleury restages pop’s frivolous pose; un-ironically, uncannily levelling the symbolic brand values of beauty, the synthetic and abjection.
Four large canvases from her Flame series – which have become something of Fleury’s personal logo – set hotrod details ablaze in her signature pink. Following on this automotive theme, her steel panel Crash Tests replicate the format of colour field paintings; dented and warped, their candy hued gloss surfaces reframe modernist elegance as an impetus of seduction and collateral damage. Fleury’s man-eater trump, however, isn’t in hot and fast mechanics, but her oversized fairytale mushrooms: wonderfully trippy, weirdly futuristic, and utterly, erotically, scandalous, their holographic sheen belies a deceptive allure of surface, the very source of Fleury’s own-brand aphrodisiac.