The first comprehensive monograph on Swiss artist Raphael Hefti is published on the occasion of a major solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in October 2020. Over the last ten years, Hefti has created an astonishingly rich body of work consisting of sculptures and installations, performance and “art-in-public-spaces.”

Industrial materials and manufacturing processes run like a thread through the artist’s practice. With a background in electrical engineering, industrial design, and photography, Hefti makes work based on our everyday world but focused on what is hardly noticed, the properties and possibilities of the material. He disrupts industrial process flows, developing work in close cooperation with employees of industrial production facilities.

This publication is structured as a captivating visualization of the artist complete body of work. Addressing the ground zero of Hefti’s art—material and process—diverse contributions by art researchers, fiction writers, and scientists shed light on the artist’s work and attempt to define a new interpretation. Ideas about sculpture and installation in contemporary art play a role—and so do notions such as error, risk and the finiteness of the universe.