Magali Reus / Earth stretched at noon
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Sommer Contemporary Art wishes you a healthy and festive Passover holiday! You are warmly invited to the opening of Magali Reus‘ solo exhibition, “Earth stretched at noon” at our gallery space in Tel-Aviv, located on the first floor on the left at Herzl 16 on Wednesday, March 31st, from 11:00 onwards. Opening hours: Tues-Thurs- 11:00-18:00, Fri- 10:00-14:00.

For the occasion of the exhibition, the Dutch-born, London-based artist Magali Reus has created a site-specific installation for the gallery space, featuring new and recent sculptural works. Reus’s works often begin with an existing common object – tools, appliances, devices – whose identities are intentionally ambiguous. Traditional images of thought and action, the objects Reus redeploys explain themselves as possessing function and yet through her alterations, using a combination of virtual, industrial and more traditional hand-crafted processes, they become like a kind of secondary literature for these things: they script afresh what might be materially possible for this object.

Several sculptures from the artist’s recent series “Settings” are presented on the gallery’s walls. The series takes the NO PARKING road sign as its starting point. Immediate graphic communication is the architectural essence of road signs: their message is a first and primary function – go this way, stop here, warning: dog. Nested into the public sphere over time they accrue fragments of information, contradictory patterns, or surface interferences that transform them into living collage: they are altered by the forces of weather and the debris of human intervention. Like cultural artifacts they are a quiet canvas for a more unhinged type of mark making.

As part of another new series of sculptures, “Grain of Wind” and “Apricots” posture like wind-directed weathervanes. These freestanding works are in height and size proportional to our own bodies and their shapes are suggestively directive, harnessing the idea of setting a course or actively engaging with the suggestion of movement or travel. Like a fingerprint, the weathervane is an indexical sign. It marks purpose and origin, suggests lines of power and utility. These sculptures, set out to be directive and guiding in tone towards the viewer, however it quickly transpires that their bent, twisted and weathered construction undermines their initial intent, instead making them appear quietly abandoned and stripped of utility.

Magali Reus was born in Den Haag, The Netherlands in 1981 and currently lives and works in London. Recent solo shows include As mist, description, South London Gallery, London (2018); Hot Cottons, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2017); Night Plants, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen (2017); Mustard, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); Quarters, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2016); Spring for a Ground, SculptureCenter, New York; Particle of Inch, The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield; Halted Paves, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (all 2015). Reus has been included in group exhibitions and screenings at Tate Britain, London; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; ICA, London; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, LUMA Westbau, Zürich; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon, De Appel, Amsterdam and the British Art Show 8 (touring).