Raphael Hefti in Sylhet

Working across sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and performance, Raphael Hefti explores how humans transform materials in the everyday urban landscape by pushing and testing material limits, while removing these materials from utilitarian obligations. He often works with teams of industry technicians to modify and misapply routine procedures and construction methods to open up new possibilities and unexpected beauty through guided accidents that he documents in his work.

Following his visit to Bangladesh in 2018, Hefti has been developing a drawing that moves with the air, reflecting the moving fluidity of Bangladesh’s liquid landscape. He will test this experiment and share the process with the local community in Sylhet on an open park day with Monika Sosnowska and Marcin Kapala on December 2nd. He will also continue his research in Bangladesh to develop a performance for Dhaka Art Summit inspired by railway technology.

Raphael Hefti was born in 1978 in Biel and lives and works in Zurich and London. After an apprenticeship as an electronic technician he turned to art in 1998 and graduated from the Ecole cantonale d‘art (ECAL) in Lausanne and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Raphael Hefti has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Raeber von Staenglin, Zürich (2014), the CAPC centre d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Ancient & Modern, London (2013), Camden Arts Centre, London and White Cube Bermondsey Space, London (2012). He was commissioned to create a permanent installation on the roof of the newly inaugurated Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.