Magali Reus
Sunday, 12 May 2013
Work from her oeuvre.
“Through the way the works are presented, by the appropriation of objects, and thanks to the use of colour, two identifiable thematic series thus gradually come to the fore: on the one hand, sporting imagery, with training sessions and gym equipment (rings, wall-bars and wallbrackets, and various training mats), and, on the other, the signs of mass exoticism. Thus described, it becomes increasingly obvious that she is proposing something akin to an abstract version of the visual leisure world, mainly sport and tourism, along with the many di!erent ways they are depicted by the media. So Magali Reus’s work does not seem to have the autonomy which it at first appears to lay claim to.
Heteronomy—being subject to something else—defines many abstract, conceptual and minimal works produced since the 1960s. So it is in relation to something external that certain abstract paintings may nowadays be described as realist.¹ These “found abstractions”² are to be found all around us, in reality; they have invaded everyday life. Minimalism, similarly, which, at the outset, saw itself stripped of all symbolic and structurally autonomous content, has become gradually loaded with many di!erent meanings. In particular, it started making reference to luxury furniture, and the graphic quality of the brands and logos of the large corporations of the 1960s.” – Jill Gasparina