Magali Reus Opens 'Swimming By Night' at London's Perimeter — SkimNews
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- Magali Reus opens her show "Swimming By Night" at the Perimeter in London, featuring sculptures that recreate everyday disposable items — pizza boxes, sardine tins, candy hearts — on a larger-than-life scale.
- The "Subs" series mimics discarded pizza boxes but is constructed from aluminium with meticulously ripped and hand-hammered edges, with images of discarded Christmas trees hidden inside.
- "Rig (All Eyes On)" centers on a candy heart reading "Let's Hang," enlarged from a normally fleeting confection meant to dissolve on the tongue into something physically imposing.
- Reus, born in the Netherlands and based in London, has previously shown at the Kunstverein Freiburg in Germany and Kunsthalle Wien in Austria.
- The artist describes her practice as a response to "extreme overproduction, consumption and waste," aiming to give throwaway items "autonomy as objects" so they become "active agents" rather than passive things.
- Reus says her aim is for her sculptures to "refuse to serve us" and "establish their own parameters," a transformation she says "changes the way that people relate to the object or the image."
Why it matters: Reus's Perimeter show reframes consumer waste not as a recycling problem but as a question of object autonomy — she describes giving everyday items "their own parameters" so they "refuse to serve us." For a contemporary art conversation increasingly touching on sustainability, the exhibition offers a sculptural, philosophical alternative to standard recycling rhetoric.
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