Mandla Reuter’s large installations complicate the space they occupy by redirecting movement, the audience’s presence and the flow of information. By incorporating found objects, large-scale abstract sculptures, plants, sound, video and lighting – blocking, obstructing and expanding – the works actively require the viewer to participate in the composition of the space. Examining questions of art production, debunking the neutrality of exhibition spaces and playing with the difference between the natural and the artifice, Reuter continuously reinvents the language of art-making. His installations at once alienate the outside environment by inserting fictional, abstract imagery and present familiar metaphors and contradictions of contemporary human subjectivity. From local to universal, Reuter’s work reverts to the intervention and reinvention of art, artefacts, space and experience alike.
Written by Goldsmiths CCA ...
