Raphael Hefti’s exhibition “Salutary Failures” at Kunsthalle Basel, consisted of monumental block-like sculptures made from porous black foundry sand, with splashes and spills of shiny aluminium. Hefti’s work invites the audiance to look at materiality in a different way. What may have previously been considered a failure should no longer be classified as such, but approached from a different angle, in art and in life.
In this conversation, E.A.T. curator Bice Curiger visited the exhibition together with the artist and discussed with him his unusual use of debris material, how the rough, unfinished surfaces challenge the aesthetics of perfected industrial creation, and how the work shown is reminiscent of geological formations found on volcanic islands.
“It’s about material that is very basic. But they have a touch of the industrial world and industrial time, which immediately opens the work up to temporary dimensions, which in turn goes back to the history of earth.”
– Bice Curiger
