LONDON.- The Perimeter opened Swimming by Night, Magali Reus’ first institutional exhibition in London since 2018.
Four bodies of new and recent works – Merlin (2024), Streamers (2025), Rig (2025–26) and Subs (2026) – are brought into dialogue with site-specific wall renderings and architectural interventions. Rooted by an interest in ecology and systems of production, this exhibition speaks to the relationship between nature, technology and the impact of post-industrial human activity.
Together, these works play with the dynamics of attention, where objects become carriers of competing narratives around desire, consumption and transformation. Constructed using varied techniques of fabrication, ranging from the handcrafted to the industrial, Reus’ process unfolds through its own material language, where forms and symbols feel familiar yet not immediately determinable.
In the Rig series, wall-mounted sculptures evoke fishhooks or larger-than-life earrings. Poised between adornment and capture, they stage an underlying dynamic of courtship. A tension between openness and confinement, growth and decay, is developed in the Merlin series, which are reminiscent of empty sardine tins and discarded disposable packaging. Implements of entrapment, food preparation and storage fold into one another, creating vessels that appear simultaneously inhabited and abandoned. Through shifts in scale and arresting juxtapositions, Reus blurs the boundaries between species and their environment, habitat and object.
Positioned in parallel are the Streamers, a series of freestanding sculptures uncannily resembling both chalky fish skeletons and ailing spruce trees. While their silhouettes suggest collapse, they are not solely mournful forms; instead, they linger and lean towards celebration. Similar motifs recur in the Subs series, in which aluminium pizzabox-like shapes act as display structures for screen-printed motifs and images from Reus’ photographic archive. Swimming by Night inhabits a space between natural and mechanical worlds, revealing the entangled relationships between consumption, decay and regeneration that bind living systems to the material environments we construct.
Magali Reus (b. 1981, The Hague) lives and works in London. She creates sculptures that transform seemingly everyday objects. By detaching them from their original function, layered and complex assemblages of images and materials emerge. Instead of using readymades, Reus combines advanced technologies with traditional craftsmanship to create works that playfully reinterpret familiar elements from reality.
Recent and forthcoming institutional exhibitions include, CAPC Bordeaux, France; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (both 2028); Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany (both 2026); Museum Beelden Aan Zee, Den Haag, Netherlands (2025-6); Kunstmuseum, Den Haag, Netherlands (2025); Museo del Novecento, Milan, Italy; Kunstmuseum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (both 2024); Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia; CAC la Synagogue de Delme, France; Museum Dhondt- Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (all 2023); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, USA (2022); South London Gallery, UK (2018); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland (both 2017); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (both 2016); Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany; The Hepworth Wakefield, UK; SculptureCenter NY, USA (all 2015). Reus was awarded the 7th edition of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Sculpture Prize in 2024, shortlisted for the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture 2018, and in 2015 was awarded The Prix de Rome. Her work is included in international collections including Tate Collection, UK; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands; Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands; The Hepworth Wakefield, UK; Collection CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, United States; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany; Frac Grand Large – Hauts-de-France, France; Lafayette Anticipation – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris, France; LAM Museum, Lisse, Netherlands; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Arts Council Collection, UK; Government Art Collection, London, UK; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; The Perimeter, London, UK.
