Magali Reus: Salt: Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany
Forthcoming exhibition
Installation Views
Press release
What draws us to certain things? How are we lured and captured by objects? Dutch artist Magali Reus’ recent sculptures engage mechanisms of seduction and deception to explore wider economies of attention and desire. Constructed using a myriad of fabrication languages – from handicraft to mass production – these works create their own ecology of materials. Their silhouettes conjure familiar forms yet remain indeterminate in both identity and function.
The new sculptures – presented within a scenography developed for the Kunstverein’s exhibition hall – are envisaged as shimmering apparitions. While the wall‑mounted works from the Rig series resemble larger-than-life fishing lures or earrings and play with the dynamics of enticement, the freestanding sculptures Streamers evoke ailing spruce trees and fish skeletons, like relics of past excess. In their arrangement, the groups of sculptures diagram cycles of consumption: from the initial seductive force of a commodity, fuelled by strategies of packaging and design, to its eventual rejection and decay. Yet here, it is exactly those discarded remnants that refuse their assigned place and celebrate a glamorous return.
The new sculptures – presented within a scenography developed for the Kunstverein’s exhibition hall – are envisaged as shimmering apparitions. While the wall‑mounted works from the Rig series resemble larger-than-life fishing lures or earrings and play with the dynamics of enticement, the freestanding sculptures Streamers evoke ailing spruce trees and fish skeletons, like relics of past excess. In their arrangement, the groups of sculptures diagram cycles of consumption: from the initial seductive force of a commodity, fuelled by strategies of packaging and design, to its eventual rejection and decay. Yet here, it is exactly those discarded remnants that refuse their assigned place and celebrate a glamorous return.
