LONDON.- In January Camden Arts Centre presents the first solo show in the UK by Swiss artist Raphael Hefti. For the past ten years he has been interfering with material processes, manipulating and transforming substances to create surprising images and objects. Coming from a technical background with a keen interest in how things are made and what things can do, Hefti sets-up pseudo scientific experiments which challenge industrial fabricators and ultimately divert objects from their original state. This exhibition approaches his investigations from a specific tangent: discovering mistakes in industrial processes and pushing them to a limit where aesthetic transformations take place, where accidents are seen as productive forces. Consisting of large scale objects and photograms installed in Gallery 3 and the Central Space, Raphael Hefti runs at Camden Arts Centre from 20 January until 18 March 2012.

Subtraction as Addition is a work that comes out of the Luxar coating process, which produces ‘museumglass’. The process of vaporising specific metals and bonding them to the surface of glass with a high voltage current in a vacuum container eliminates reflection for exhibition purposes. Exaggerating an accidental discovery inherent in the repetition of this process, the large sheets of glass evolve with variable optical behaviour that will change with the ambient light in the gallery. Replaying the Mistake of a Broken Hammer similarly subverts the function of an industrial process, resulting in an aesthetic transformation. A steel rod is subjected to a hardening technique, that is interrupted leaving part of its extension extremely brittle and vulnerable; the resulting gradations of colour and texture testify to this otherwise unknown condition. Lycopodium is a series of large format black & white and colour photograms, creating ambiguous images by burning the spores of the Lycopodium plant on photosensitive paper.

Born in Biel-Bienne in Switzerland in 1978 Hefti completed his MA in September 2011 at the Slade School of Fine Art. He works between London and Switzerland and this year won the Art Award Kanton Zurich 2011. His recent solo exhibitions include 327 Different Sounds Coalmine Galerie, Winterthur, Switzerland and Beginning with the first thing that comes to mind Fluxia, Milan (both 2010). Group shows include Magical & Poetical Structures - New Existentialism, Kunstzeughaus Rapperswil-Jona; How to work (more for) less, Kunsthalle Basel (both 2011) and The sun is the tongue, the shadow is the language, Ancient & Modern Gallery, London New contemporaries 2010 A-Foundation, Liverpool & ICA London (both 2010). He is represented by Ancient & Modern Gallery, London.

Raphael Hefti is on show at Camden Arts Centre at the same time as an exhibition by German artist Hanne Darboven.