For Of Root Magali Reus presents works from her most recent series Landings, What Grows and Clementine. It is the first time the works are shown in the Netherlands, after their premiere in several museum solo exhibitions throughout Europe. All three series presented here, speak of how the western world has been cultivating a highly manipulated and controlled relationship to the perception of nature and the natural. The representation of nature traditionally finds its precedents in art historical still life painting, imbued with all its weighted symbolism. Reus is interested in how we have been constructing our concept of nature and position towards the natural world; thinking of it as ‘sculptural and pictorial matter’ which allows endless manipulation, to the point of erasure and confusion of its roots or origins.
Reus began the series Landings in summer 2021 in her hometown of The Hague, photographing fruit and sliced cabbage against the backdrop of construction debris found in skip bins – heaped rubble, plaster dust, spent paint cans, and splintered floorboards. Reframed as surreal and enlarged fruit bowls, the containers twist the tradition of Low Country still life painting, inviting meditation on the incongruities of our relation to nature, artifice and ephemeral life. The photographs are embedded into sculptural frames of powder-coated steel, layered on a reconstructed childhood painting of the artist. The steel frame contains letters and numbers welded onto its sides along with swatches of tarpaulin and twisted wire. These markings convey abbreviations of months and the miles travelled by the crop from its place of harvest to its place of documentation.