Paul de Reus -- a walk with a cat

Opening days:
Saturday, September 4, 12.00 - 18.00
Sunday, September 5, 12.00 - 18.00

I think I want people to look at things from a different angle, to be surprised and curious, to start thinking and feeling what another side of their point of view looks like.

Human beings are a central focus in the work of Paul de Reus, with all of their peculiarities, complexities, vulnerabilities and stuff. In his sculptures, installations, drawings and photographs, fantasy and reality are closely intertwined, emphasizing the fallibility and parody of social experience.  Taking his inspiration in the encounters and throws of daily life, relationships, sexuality, family, love, dreams - the often unexplainable yet choreographed elements of existence that we all share - are some of the conditions that de Reus reflects on, in his work. 

His protagonists, finding themselves often in surreal and wonderous environments and surroundings, are like allegories of the subjects that preoccupy him. Within the works, absurd positions and grotesque situations, orchestrated with an attuned sense of wit, in which a sense of phenomenological disorder is pervasive, question the circadian social rhythms of the self. In the posturing and gesture of his figures, we are confronted with familiar yet affective provocations, while the paradoxical happenings stage a comedy of everyday life - a tradition that was already to be found in the painting of the Golden Age of the Netherlands – here all the more captivating in its contemporaneity. 

a walk with the cat, the titular work of the exhibition, surprises with a break in its seemingly lyrical scenery. In girl in the bushes we see a lone, perhaps alienated figure, amongst a poetic constellation of trash. Mounted on the posterior wall of the exhibition space, mode, amongst a glorious mound of garments piled high, two young girls embrace. A moment of tenderness in defiance of the surrounding detritus. A tragic ode to excess. 

Drawing attention to spaces of domesticity, cycles of capitalist consumption and the passions, feelings, meanings to be found amongst their pastures and wastelands, these works are very much exemplary of the contradictory modes that de Reus evokes. There is an inherent antagonism that the viewer cannot escape. Broken yet full. Sublime yet unfortunately ordinary. Being human.