DALLAS, Texas (January 8, 2020)—The Nasher Sculpture Center announces Sightings: Magali Reus, on view April 18 – August 16, 2020. The exhibition will be the second major US show for the Dutch-born, London-based artist.
The meticulously rendered sculptures of Magali Reus often find their inspiration in a readily overlooked everyday object—a dehumidifier, a no-parking sign, a ladder— removing it from its original, useful purpose and transmuting it into a form open to a wide-ranging accrual of new identities, meanings, and associations. Her thoughtful interrogations of the metaphorical play between such objects and our own bodies can generate a dreamlike logic providing insights into the often disjointed character of contemporary life, where we may accord greater attention to the digital realm than our actual surroundings and where the production, distribution, and consumption of objects become processes that are frequently obscured, isolated, and alienated from one another.
“We are very enthusiastic about Magali Reus’s exhibition here at the Nasher this spring. Her enigmatic sculptural objects and arrangements promise to inspire curiosity as well as a deep consideration of our complicated contemporary material and digital culture,” says Director Jeremy Strick.
According to Reus, “My working process is one of continual accumulation and erasure. In many instances, my sculptures begin with the idea of an existing common object—something that performs passively as a vessel or receiver of useful action—and turns it on its head. . . . When an object is allowed to undergo physical transformation, it can become a destabilizing and emancipatory act: it is allowed to pursue or perform a different image of itself. I’m interested in unplugging from the immediate representative associations we have for all existing material things.”
As part of the Nasher Sculpture Center’s Sightings series of smaller-scale exhibitions or installations that highlight the work of emerging or established artists, Reus will create two groups of new sculptures. One of these will unspool the distinctive typography and color of the Nasher’s specially designed green “EXIT” signs, while the other will present large, wall-mounted works that bring together two transitory sites of exchange: the fruit bowl—a staple of still life painting for centuries—and the market stall where the bowl’s contents might be received, displayed and sold.
About Magali Reus
Born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1981, Magali Reus graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London, where she currently lives and works. Her work has been the focus of several museum exhibitions, including presentations at Hepworth Wakefield (2015 and 2018); Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2015); SculptureCenter, New York (2015); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2017); Bergen-Kunsthall (2017); and South London Gallery (2018). In 2013-2014 she held a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, and in 2015 she was awarded the Prix de Rome; she was nominated for the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture in 2018. Her works are in the collections of the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Stedelijk Museum; Tate, London; and others