Magali Reus’ installations and videos highlight the uncanny qualities of products. She creates narratives around objects, often relating their surfaces to bodies–lifeless or animate, sterile or contaminated. Mixed media installation Parking (Service) (2013), for instance, features a pair of pristine stadium seats installed on the wall that nonetheless communicate non-functionality. One is precariously propped open by a cane while the other is held closed by a strap. They are both too narrow and mounted too low. Citing an interest in “this temporary moment of transience and deferral, before completion or arrival,” her fold-open chairs read as a waiting area, both for the chairs and their sitters. Similarly, Out of Empty (2013) presents material in flux–a glass of container holding a series of objects cast from aluminum batteries and black polyurethane rubber watch which are stranded in a layer of ice water as if obsolete fossils.

Many of Reus’ installations include transparent packaging and encasements–custom-made sheets of curved glass or plastic sheaths. Her protective layers deny touch, much like the LCD screens that mediate contemporary viewing experiences. The inaccessibility of her sleek and glossy works speak to the fetish of consumerism as much as sexual fetish and desire.

Reus has had solo exhibitions at The Approach in London, Galerie Fons Welters in Amsterdam, Albert Baronian in Brussels, and unosolo project room in Milan. A 2015 solo presentation of her work is co-commissioned by SculptureCenter, the Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire, and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. She has been included in group exhibitions at Fridericianum in Kassel, De Hallen Harlaam, and David Roberts Art Foundation in London.