Raphael Hefti
Salutary Failures
Edited by Fabian Schöneich
Texts by Carina Bukuts, Adam Jasper, Nora N. Khan, Dieter Roelstraete, Fabian Schöneich, and Carmen Van Pamel
With a conversation between Elena Filipovic and Raphael Hefti
Copublished with Kunsthalle Basel
Designed by Maximage
2021, English / German, hardcover, 19 x 27 cm, 340 pages
ISBN 978-88-945353-0-3
The first comprehensive monograph on the work of Swiss artist Raphael Hefti is published on the occasion of his major solo exhibition in 2020 at Kunsthalle Basel. With a career spanning over a decade, Hefti is celebrated for upending and disrupting—seemingly ordinary—industrial and post-industrial processes. Hefti’s intimate encounters with materials take form in colossal sculptures, performances that (at times) flirt with the brink of disaster, and sprawling public interventions. Often operating under the light of Murphy’s Law, he unveils everyday things so well hidden in plain sight (and turns the principles of minimalism on their head).
This richly illustrated volume captures the artist‘s complete body of work through his process of making in factories across Europe to their installation in museums and galleries. With contributions from a diverse cast of authors—a philosopher, a science-fiction writer, and an art historian among others—Hefti‘s material transformations come to life in saturated words and images that tell stories of error, risk and wonder (from the scale of the particle to the universe at large).
Every copy of this book is unique. The distribution of pigments is the result of their manipulation during screen printing, and no two covers are alike. Printed by the artist in collaboration with Atelier für Siebdruck, Lorenz Boegli, Müntschemier, CH.
The artist
Raphael Hefti (*1978 Boudevilliers, CH) first apprenticed as an electronics engineer. He went on to study photography at ECAL, Lausanne and fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated with a Master’s degree. His work has been exhibited at the following institutions, among others: Kunsthalle Basel; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Liverpool Biennale; Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles; Nottingham Contemporary; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Camden Art Centre, London. A presentation of his work at the Guggenheim Bilbao is planned for this year. Hefti lives and works in Zurich.