Mandla Reuter

In 2010, Mandla Reuter bought a parcel of land in Los Angeles that acts as the remote matrix of a series of works that inhabits the back room of his solo show at Mezzanin gallery: a dark blue, monochrome map using a diazo chemical process, a technique that was used by architects to copy plans, is displayed in relationship with a group of photographs that, placed upside down, documents the surroundings of the terrain. The South-African born, Berlin-based Reuter connects this ghost-site with an ensemble of other pieces that freely associate indexes of a personal geography, as well as a meditation on global networks: a ready-made optical fibre cable hung on the wall evokes a futurist tree branch (Electricity, 2018), small Thasos marble rocks, that travelled in a container from Greece to Los Angeles, and a optical fibre cable remain silently on the floor (Clouds, 2018). In the vitrine, the cast of a cacao nut (Fruit, 2018) silently reminds us of the fact that Switzerland may not itself be removed from the marketplace of  global postcolonial trade.
- Yann Chateigné