MAGALI REUS

Magali Reus creates sculptural objects that are seemingly recognizable, often appropriating the symbolism of ordinary objects from our immediate surroundings. In the detailed and meticulously produced surfaces of the sculptures, conventionally analogue gestures have been enhanced with complex casting and moulding and metal work techniques. There is a flourish of mechanisation relocated to the hand-touched and vice versa. The result is objects that appear with an unclear, unsteady identity; between the commonplace and the hyper real.

The Hwael series (2017) consists of different “sections”, seemingly broken off from a larger whole, in the rhetorical manner of a fragmented whale skeleton. The effect is ruinous yet in progress. Proportionally and visually analogous to the skeletal framework of the public bus, these metal structures reference the supply of movement (of both body and machine) through urban space. The “bones” of these sculptures are left unclad, raw in the sense of the fleshless rib cage of a beached and long desiccated whale. 

Magali Reus recent solo exhibitions include As mist, description, South London Gallery, UK (2018); Hot Cottons, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2017); Night Plants, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2017); Mustard, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2016); Quarters, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2016); Spring for a Ground, SculptureCenter, NY, USA; Particle of Inch, The Hepworth Wakefield, UK; Halted Paves, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany (2015). Reus has been included in group exhibitions and screenings at Tate Britain, London, UK; ICA, London, UK; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, Germany; LUMA Westbau, Zürich, Switzrland; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon, Portugal; De Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands and the British Art Show 8 (touring).