Mandla Reuter
12. Oktober 2012 – 13. Januar 2013

The Kunstverein Arnsberg is pleased to present Mandla Reuter at the Lichthaus Arnsberg

Mandla Reuter's works often consist of interventions that change the surrounding architecture in a more or less direct way and connote its perception. Standing alone as images, however, they also combine to form a construction of real or fictitious references, from which further possible narratives emanate.

At the centre of the exhibition is The Gate (2012). Consisting of an erratic boulder placed in the room, an unworked chunk of granite moulded by nature, under which a plastic bag containing various objects is half-hidden. On the one hand a stand-alone object, the work also provides access to a property in Los Angeles that Reuter acquired a few years ago as part of his artistic endeavours. The work The Gate (2012) thus serves as a reference to a specific location and, primarily due to its assumed practical function, is able to stimulate a multitude of narrative threads beyond itself without resolving them in the end.
Another work, Untitled (2012), consists of a refrigerator left open. Based on an everyday negligence, an ongoing situation is created that takes on a concrete function within the pavilion, its illumination.
A section of an earlier work that Reuter had installed in the exhibition space, Jet D'Eau (2012), which was shown in its full size in a previous exhibition, completes the ensemble. This element, which itself becomes a new work in this way, can be seen as a possibility of a water connection that refers to different uses, be it a fundamental reclamation of an area through its water supply, or the decoration of architecture with the help of an oversized fountain.

Mandla Reuter was born in 1975 in Nqutu, South Africa, and lives in Basel. His most recent solo exhibitions have been shown at De Vleeshal, Middelburg (2011), Kunsthalle Lingen (2009), Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2009), as well as in numerous group exhibitions such as Made in Germany Zwei, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2012), Based in Berlin, Berlin (2011), Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2011), Köln Skulptur 6 (2011), Momentum Biennale, Moss (2011), Castello di Tivoli, Turin (2010), Gwangju Biennale (2008), Site Biennale, Santa Fe (2008).