Works from Magali Reus’ Settings series draw on the familiar no-parking signs that line narrow or busy streets, directing the flow of traffic. Where these signs display their information merely on the surface, the meaning of the works seems to lie hidden beneath it. Scraped and sanded, the top layer gives way and reveals compartments holding fragments of objects: part of a list bearing the word LETTERS, a shell engraved with a 2, or the slider and pull-tab of a zipper. Carefully preserved, these artifacts seem to belong to another time and culture, as if they had been waiting to be found in order to point us in a certain direction.

‍

Magali Reus’ sculptural practice transforms everyday objects and systems into works that shed their original function and present a different image of themselves. With a sensuous material intelligence, she combines industrial and craft techniques (casting, moulding, CNC milling, metalwork), setting the slickness of manufacture against the slow labor of handiwork. Her recent work deepens its engagement with ecology and systems of production, and the tension between constructed nature, technology, and post-industrial human impact. Repetition and seriality form a recurring principle, linking objects to larger systems of meaning and logic.

‍