The Exchange: Sylvie Fleury and Esben Weile Kjær

Sylvie Fleury and Esben Weile Kjær have a lot in common. The artists both sample the language of advertising and pop culture to subvert the codes of consumerism and self-identity that dominate our everyday lives. Fleury began making waves in the 1990s, against the backdrop of MTV’s 24-hour entertainment cycle and the grip of mainstream advertising juggernauts. Weile Kjær, meanwhile, represents a younger generation who spent their formative years overwhelmed by the communicative explosion enabled by social media. Now, the pair open separate solo exhibitions in London (Fleury at Sprüth Magers, Weile Kjær at brand new gallery Albion Jeune). While Fleury brings together works that encompass couture shopping bags, muscle car culture and phallic sculptures, Kjær creates illuminated images and high-impact alien heads that dangle from the gallery ceiling. They met to discuss image-making, music and a recent collaboration.

Sylvie Fleury: When we met last year at the ‘Another Surrealism’ exhibition at the Den Frie in Copenhagen, it’s fair to say it was love at first sight. I was so impressed by the show, these ideas of the surreal being interpreted by a younger generation. I wouldn’t normally travel to a group exhibition if I had only one work in it, but I followed my intuition, and it paid off. I don’t need my crystal ball anymore!

Esben Weile Kjær: That was my first summer out of art school, and it was such an amazing experience to be part of a show that was rewriting a very complex history, while also being so much fun.

SF: That was where we first started talking about inflatables. When there was the opportunity to collaborate on something for the Felix Art Fair at the Roosevelt Hotel, in a David Hockney pool, it was the perfect, playful medium.

EWK: Creating these sperm-like inflatable aliens, writhing around this glamorous Hollywood setting, where surgery makes people look like aliens, and the interactions are all so strange –it is such a performative situation. When I watch your videos, there’s something intuitive about the archetype of an image, because these are performances that we’re all surrounded by in TV and advertising. But you distort these ideas of power and gender, of winning and losing.

SF: In your live pieces, it is a performance, but there is also a free flow. You’re blurring the lines.

EWK: I completely agree. You saw my piece BURN! at Centre Pompidou last year, where people in firefighter uniforms were falling and stripping against the backdrop of indoor firework machines, which are reminiscent of TV game shows. I was playing with the codes of the entertainment industry and was originally inspired by a photo from a New York pride parade, where strippers dressed as firefighters were being dragged off a float by actual firefighters. The performance was live-streamed on Instagram and people reacted very angrily, very quickly – it became very politicised. I couldn’t believe how far it went, with people saying I was ‘disrespecting’ the profession and a fixed idea of masculinity. In reality, I was playing with the idea of creating an image, like our inflatable aliens floating in a Hollywood pool, surrounded by hipsters.

SF: Back when I was making work in the 1990s, I was obsessed with MTV and absurd advertising clips. That was our equivalent of Instagram. I loved creating fake adverts, where you think it’s going to sell you maybe a watch or a race car or something. In the end, though, it’s nothing. I was commenting on the gendered situation at the time, but I was always gentle, always playful.

EWK: Growing up in the ‘90s, there was a constant stream of advertising and we were listening to hardcore, hypersexualised music without understanding what it meant. Yet when I got to art school, no one was talking about this form of mass image-making. No one was considering the emotional aspects of living in a capitalist society: what does all this commercial advertising do? How does it make us feel? What I find fascinating about your work is the ambivalent sensibility. You’re not telling people what to do. I see it as giving space, to allow people to try and understand themselves within this crazy media-driven world.

SF: I went through a period of thinking that advertising was trying to send me messages. There was something mystical happening, which is why I started taking out the words and bringing them into my work.

EWK: Playing with words and graphics is very natural for me too, because I come from a music background. In my new exhibition, I have taken images from my own performances and recreated them in stained glass, with text. It is reminiscent of the posters and flyers I designed for myself when I was a DJ. I’m playing around with this super analogue way of illuminating an image, which you don’t just find in churches, but strip clubs and casinos.

SF: You know I had a techno hit in the ‘90s? It was called Boots and Lipgloss with DJ Sid, who was creating a lot of the music for my videos at the time.

EWK: That is incredible! Have you ever DJ’d?

SF: No, but I have been asked many times as I have a huge collection of Christmas music. Nobody likes it, but everybody listens. Just like advertising.