Reus’s sculptures often spring from a common object—a lock, a ladder, a no-parking sign—removed from its ordinary use to become a point of departure for the creation of sculptures that explore, expand upon, and contradict the physical properties and cultural baggage of its source objects. For nearly a decade, she has achieved this proliferation of associations by working in series, developing groups of sculptures out of her initial engagement with a given type of object: “The idea of multiplication or seriality can also be used as a rhythmic device for enforcing relationships to physicality.” These relationships are formed in the crux of Reus’s practice, which encompasses digitally designed forms, complex procedures of molding, casting, and 3D printing, and prolonged periods of finishing and adjustment by hand—all carried out using a dizzying array of materials, from aluminum, steel, and wood to resin, nylon, and fabric. The initial abstraction that distances objects from their usual role in the world denatures them, allowing other associations to seep in and lending her sculptures their otherworldly affect. Reus has described what she makes as “unreal things;” they might appear equally at home in an environment produced by CGI or a Surrealist tableau.

The result is an exhibition of complexity unprecedented in her work. Reus’s—and the world’s—pandemic isolation has prompted renewed consideration of the objects that surround us and of issues that are crucial to the themes coursing through A Sentence in Soil: the tensions between openness and confinement, our connections to the natural world as a source of both respite and anxiety, and how we have constructed the very idea of “nature” as well as the means we have created to engineer, experience, and understand it.

Magali Reus: A Sentence in Soil is made possible by major support from the Dallas Art Fair Foundation and the Mondriaan Fund, with additional support provided by Marlene and John Sughrue.

En su segunda gran exposición en Estados Unidos, la artista holandesa radicada en Londres Magali Reus presenta una instalación que examina las relaciones entre personas y objetos a través de la distorsión de imágenes comunes.

Magali Reus reimagina objetos comunes encontrados, tales como señales de “No Estacione” o deshumidificadores, para que asuman nuevas vidas. Reus describe este acto de transformación física de un objeto como “desestabilizador y emancipador”, el cual le permite realizar una función distinta a la que la gente normalmente lo asocia.  Estos objetos y sus nuevas funciones reflejan el carácter desarticulado de la vida contemporánea, en la cual la producción y el consumo digitales hacen de nuestras interacciones con los objetos un proceso más aislado y alienado.

Para la exposición del Nasher Sculpture Center, Reus creará dos grupos de nuevas esculturas que, de manera similar, le dan la vuelta a un objeto común. Uno de ellos distorsionará el color y la tipografía de las señales verdes de "EXIT" (SALIDA, en español) especialmente diseñadas para el Nasher, mientras que el otro reunirá la cesta de frutas –un objeto de naturaleza muerta muy apreciado y utilizado por los pintores– y los puestos del mercado donde se venden y exponen las frutas.

Magali Reus: Una Oración en la Tierra ha sido posible gracias al mayoritario apoyo de la Dallas Art Fair Foundation y del Mondriaan Fund, con apoyo adicional provisto por Marlene y John Sughrue.