Margins of Error

Raphael Hefti @
Nottingham Contemporary,
Nottingham, UK
17 Oct 2014 04 Jan 2015
Photography: light-drawing. The quest to capture the temporal passage of light and life,
propelled by a desire to hold still the transitory or ephemeral, to render permanent the
most fleeting of moments. Privileged within photographys history is the evolution of
technology the story of optics and the camera, prism and lens. It is easy to forget how
the emergent science of capturing light developed through the dark, even dangerous, arts
of chemical experimentation. Powdered nitrates accidentally blackened by the sun. Plates
of glass, pewter and other metals hand-coated over and over with tar-like asphalts,
bitumen and salty compounds; iodized, sensitized, then fumed with quicksilver vapours.
A risky process too, for the body is vulnerable, less resilient than metal when exposed to
solvents, selenium and cyanides, to unexpected chemical effervescence.
Trained as a photographer, Swiss-born Raphael Hefti is one of a new generation of
contemporary artists intent on resurrecting the materiality and magic of this alternative
photographic lineage. His recent solo exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, UK can
be approached as an exploration of a specific photographic sensibility, where akin to the
early experimental chemists, his work tests the transformation of various surfaces
(photographic paper, glass, metal) through processes of chemical and elemental
exposure, and through the courting, even controlling, of desirable accident. It might
seem strange to describe Heftis practice in photographic terms, since much of his work
is distinctly sculptural, minimalist in aesthetic. Industrial, utilitarian materials are factorysourced then reconfigured into abstract arrangements often using a singular, repeated
form, in turn drawing attention to the viewers own physical occupation of the gallery.
With Various threaded poles of determinate length potentially altering their determinacy
(2014), Hefti sliced through one gallery with twenty-two metal poles (of aluminium,
copper, steel and titanium), with each pole propped precariously upright towards the
ceiling, tilted disconcertedly off-balance. From a distance the poles appeared as lines
cutting and disrupting space into new and unexpected rhythms, as the audience navigated
a cautious route through. Elsewhere in the gallery, three large panes of luxar-coated glass
(part of the series Subtraction as Addition, 2014) were leant against the wall, their empty
frames repeatedly filled by the outline of gallery visitors unable to resist the fascination of
a reflective surface.
Whilst both works are minimalist and sculptural in form, the surface of the material itself
is the site for further investigative enquiry. Collaborating with factory technicians over a
sustained period, Hefti tests the capacity of various materials by exposing them to
chemical and thermal processes, pushing them beyond utilitarian expectation towards
unexpected results. In one sense, some of Heftis works might be described as thermograms, capturing the inscription of heat on a sensitized surface. Exposed to heat, the
twenty-two large poles deviate from the factory standard or norm (indicated by a shorter
untreated section propped against the wall). Repeated exposure produces a
transformation in state, uniform surfaces give way towards the bloom of unpredictable
colour: soft transitions of a rainbow spectrum; the dark ultramarine of deepest sea
seeping into violet twilight, colour of a ripe plum or bruise; the pale yellow of winter

sunrise against cold sky; dark rusts of burnt umber stain the sheen of untainted metal.
Likewise, Hefti treats the panes of glass (repeatedly) to a thermo-chemical process
designed to limit undesirable reflection. Again, the repeated exposure or over-application
of a standard process creates anomalies and inconsistencies, rendering the glass mirrored,
opaque: pinked pearlescent, pale yellow iridescent, the darkest depths of emerald green.
It is not so much that Hefti is interested in failures and misfires as such, but rather in
harnessing the potential of the unexpected therein. He occupies the margins of error
within various techniques, producing work at the threshold between contingency and
control. His is a willfully contradictory practice, where the cool logic of process-based
abstraction is unsettled by the inclusion of alchemical, even archaic, materials. Lycopodium
(2014), a series of large-scale photograms, takes its title from the name of a moss plant
whose spores (also referred to as witch powder) are highly inflammatory. By dusting the
surface of Fuji photographic paper with a thin layer of spores to enable a more gradual
burn, Hefti produces experimental photograms, pushing the capacity of the paper
without setting it alight. Highly evocative whilst strangely indeterminate, the Lycopodium
series occupied the gallery from floor to ceiling. Perception and imagination shift
between the micro and macro, from cellular to stellar, inter-galactic. Thoughts of broken
capillaries and hemorrhaged skin slip to snow capped peaks, foaming cataracts, and
impenetrable caverns. Though Heftis methods remain rule or process-based in principle,
the resulting outcomes appear incongruently Romantic through the inescapable process
of association. Indeed, whilst the artists engagement with industrial processes and
materials is minimalist and rather scientific in its vocabulary, his intent (perhaps like
the early photo-chemists) is one of pressuring them towards their limits to create
moments of surprising surplus or excess.
Emma Cocker, 2014.
Commissioned text for Camera Austria, Issue 128, January 2015.
No part of this text may be reproduced without the authors permission.
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