Dearest

Renowned for her particular take on what contemporary sculpture can be and express, Magali Reus draws on a vast range of formal influences and references, from the domestic to the industrial, the functional to the decorative, creating works that evolve as a fascinating accumulation and layering of visual details.

Designed by Irma Boom, one of the most prestigious graphic designers active today, this artist’s book offers a unique approach to art making through the unveiling of the sources, visual imagery, and connections that gave birth to the realization of three emblematic series by Magali Reus: “Dearest,” 2018; “Empty Every Night,” 2019; and “Settings,” 2019–2021. Conceived as a space where the viewer can take their time to get a closer, more intimate connection to her work, the publication alternates views of the works, close–up details, and various materials—from a 3D technical rendering and production calculations to mock ups, samples, and research photography. Sharing her production, process, and research archive, Reus allows the reader to decipher the circulation of motifs from one medium to another, her specific take on the ideas of hierarchy, representation, and systems of production, and how she explores the tensions between nature, technology, and the impact of postindustrial human activity. The book gives full credit to her ongoing thinking on objecthood and how the objects and forms she creates take on a strange, disobedient agency. Made of three separate volumes, featuring different paper and taped together, this collectible publication is itself a powerful object.

Three contributions by art critic and curator Anthony Huberman (“Leather and Logistics”), writer and art historian Philomena Epps (“The Other Hour”), and artist and writer Sean Burns (“A Love Affair”) analyze the artist’s practice through art historical and literary perspectives.

Born in 1981 in The Hague, London-based artist Magali Reus is one of the most acclaimed new voices in contemporary sculpture. Her work often begins with familiar, existing objects. Applying a sensuous material intelligence and precise compositional grammar, she coaxes out relations between the characteristics of objects, and our conventional, habitual encounters with them. Visual elements are reproduced, layered, and repeated in works that are individually crafted using complex casting, molding, CNC milling, and metalwork techniques, pitting the slick emptiness of manufacture against the slow diligence of handiwork. Oscillating between craft-based and technological production, the works destabilize material identity and association. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include “A Sentence in Soil,” Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2022); “On Like Scenery,” Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Ghent; “Le Plat principal,” La Synagogue de Delme, Delme; and “Deeper Green,” Kunsthalle Bratislava, Bratislava (all 2023); Museum Kurhaus, Kleve (2024); and CAPC, Bordeaux (2025).

Published with the support of the Mondriaan Fonds, the Jaap Harten Fonds, and the Stedelijk Museum Fonds.