12 august 2024, Wouter van den Eijkel
Magali Reus - Our Volumes
Just across the border in the German town of Kleve, Magali Reus is holding her first retrospective exhibition. At Museum Kurhaus Kleve (MKK), you can see Our Volumes, featuring over 120 sculptures and photographic works created by Reus in the past decade, until 10 October. On Wednesday 21 August, Galerie Fons Welters is organising a visit to the exhibition by tour bus.
According to the saying, geniuses are rarely recognised in their own country. Fortunately for us, this is not the case just across the German border, so there is no need to travel far. In the former Kurhaus of Kleve – a 20-minute drive from Nijmegen – you can now see a large overview of Magali Reus's work. Our Volumes boasts over 120 works Reus has created in the past 12 years. Reus (NL, 1981) studied at the Rietveld Academy, followed by Goldsmiths College in 2002 and later the Rijksakademie (2013-2014). Reus lives and works in London and has been represented by Galerie Fons Welters since her time at the Rijksakademie.
In 2015, she won the Prix de Rome with work from her series Leaves, which consists of large-scale padlocks, often revealing their inner workings. The jury report succinctly expresses what makes her work so fascinating: “This artist works purposefully and in a controlled manner on a new course, making clear choices and translating them into a stimulating presentation that is both formal and personal, gradually revealing itself to the visitor.” The key words here are ‘purposeful’ and ‘controlled’, and the seemingly contradictory terms formal and personal, which allow the work to gradually disclose itself.
Magali Reus, 'Our Volumes' in Museum Kurhaus Kleve (MKK) by Simon Vogel
The jam jar paradox
That description is still accurate, as evidenced by Reus’s latest series, Landings (2022), What Grows (2022) and Clementines (2023), also on display in Kleve. The Clementines series, for instance, partly consists of Bonne Maman jars. They are mounted perpendicular to the wall, so that you are looking at the lid. A more mundane object than a jam jar is almost unimaginable, yet you remain fascinated, if only because the jam jars are presented in large format.
This commonplace object is the starting point from which Reus raises questions about authenticity, our distance from nature, our daily environment and way of life – questions that gradually arise. Reus's perfectly executed jars turn out to have been reused one by one. If you think you are the only one who washes and saves these particular glass jars to store rubber bands, paint, buttons or thumbtacks, you are mistaken. Entire communities seem to do this. In Reus’s enlarged versions, you’ll find pickles, homemade raspberry jam and a pink, paint-like substance.
Why do we do this specifically with these jars? The most obvious answer lies in the design of the jars. With their distinctive octagonal shape, ‘handwritten’ label and Vichy checkered lid, they exude handmade jam. But nothing could be further from the truth, as Bonne Maman produces millions of jars of jam every year. Jam production doesn’t get much more industrial than that. What does this faux authenticity say about how we have structured our society if we accept this as the real thing and is the reuse or appropriation of these jars actually more authentic than the original product?
Magali Reus, 'Our Volumes' in Museum Kurhaus Kleve (MKK) by Simon Vogel
A logistics hub on the dinner table
The way we have structured our society and tailored nature to our needs is a subject Reus often addresses in her work. For instance, she created the Landings series after the pandemic. The series consists of numerous alternative still lifes, not pieces of fruit, oysters and cheese on a white tablecloth as we know from Heda and Claesz, but pieces of fruit among discarded building materials from construction containers, as considerable renovation work took place after the lockdowns. Here, too, there is a seamless interplay between personal and universal, between the micro and macro levels.
On a personal level, a fruit bowl functions like Freud’s bookshelf. "Show me your bookshelf, and I’ll tell you who you are" is a famous quote attributed to the Viennese psychoanalyst. Reus comments, “A fruit bowl has intense symbolism, because within a household, it also represents someone’s aspirations, and composing a bowl of fruit is a creative process; you might consider it as bringing elements together into a sculptural whole: it shows your preferences and that you eat healthily.”
On a macro level, a fruit bowl can be seen as a logistics hub, according to Reus. “A still life with fruit or other food items is a bizarre construction; it is essentially a node in a logistics system.” After all, it is not inconceivable that the grapes come from Argentina, the bananas from Brazil and the kiwis from Kenya. “You might consciously eat less meat, but if the fruit you consume has to travel such distances, it’s just as harmful.” On the side of the steel frames of Reus’s still lifes, the number of kilometres the fruit travelled to her plate is displayed.
In another recent series, What Grows, Reus emphasizes even more strongly the distribution chain behind our consumerism. What Grows consists, among other things, of enlarged versions of the boxes used to transport flowers. “Everything has to be in plastic nowadays, because we are actually afraid of nature. We no longer have a direct relationship with it. Even when we go for a picnic, we have to bring a folding table and parasol. You could compare the relationship with nature to the relationship we have with the objects around us, which serve us, and so our habits continue.”
Magali Reus, 'Our Volumes' in Museum Kurhaus Kleve (MKK) by Simon Vogel
Small moments
Besides an overview of her work, Reus also playfully interrupts the permanent collection of the Kurhaus. “There are many of these small interruptions. They are not all equally obvious, so you have to pay close attention if you don’t want to miss them,” Reus says about how she carefully curated the exhibition. For example, she replaced some religious statues in a display with her own work. Next to a sculpture by Ewald Mataré, she placed one of her own works of art in a glass case. But even the walls of the exhibition space are involved. The Vichy checkered pattern returns in the arches of the windows and graphic elements from the Landings series are magnified on the walls.
On Wednesday 21 August at 7:30 p.m., Rein Wolfs, Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, will be holding a talk with Magali Reus. Galerie Fons Welters is organising transport to Kleve that day. A tour bus departs from Amsterdam at 5 p.m. and the cost is 10 euros. Reserve by 13 August via [email protected]. A maximum of 48 people can join.
Our Volumes by Magali Reus is on display at Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany, until 10 October.
Magali Reus, 'Our Volumes' in Museum Kurhaus Kleve (MKK) by Simon Vogel
