Magali Reus

First monograph

Born in 1981 in The Hague, London-based artist Magali Reus is one of the most acclaimed new voices in contemporary sculpture. Published on the occasion of her exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Fall 2016), this publication is the first monograph dedicated to her work, and features her recent series (the “Parking,” “Lukes,” “Dregs,” “In Place Of,” and “Leaves”) and the new sculptures created for the Amsterdam exhibition. It contains an interview with the artist by curators Leontine Coelewij (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Andrew Bonacina (The Hepworth Wakefield), as well as contributions by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam director Beatrix Ruf, artist Liam Gillick, art critic Kirsty Bell, and writer Andrew Durbin.

Renowned for her interest in the relationship between mass-produced articles and the human body in the context of today’s digital society, Magali Reus draws on a vast range of formal influences and references, from the domestic to the industrial, the functional to decorative, creating pieces that evolve as an accumulation and layering of sculptural details. Taking everyday objects as starting points, her work operates on a visual register as a formal configuration, but also as a choreography of emotional and physical experience. For her, objects like fridges, padlocks, seating, and street curbs are not seen only as facilitators of our everyday actions, but also as physical receptacles for our bodies. She is thus interested in positioning them not only as shells or providers, but as objects imbued with their own sense of personality. Detached from their surroundings and translated into immaculate, abstract forms they become uncanny and perplexing, acquiring a very different life, which is almost theatrical. Colliding the macro logic of daily architecture with the more metaphorical projections of a body inhabiting space, Magali Reus’ practice focuses on the physical and psychic space of objecthood.

Magali Reus’ recent exhibitions include: The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield; SculptureCenter, New York; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. In 2015, she won the Prix de Rome, the longest-standing prize for artists in the Netherlands. In Summer 2017, she will have her first museum solo exhibition in Switzerland, at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen.

Published with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, The Approach, London, and the support of the Mondriaan Fund.