Rui Chafes X Alberto Giacometti: Gris Vide Cris III

First time together in the Netherlands

The Portuguese contemporary artist Rui Chafes (Lisbon, 1966) was born in the same year that Alberto Giacometti (Borgonovo, 1901 – Chur, 1966) died. Although separated by time, place and artistic language, they share an artistic aspiration: transcendence and the act of making the invisible visible. Each explores, in their own way, how sculpture bears witness to both presence and absence – a tension between body, space and mind. Whilst Giacometti achieves this through a process of reduction, Chafes, on the other hand, explores the limits of iron.

The exhibition Rui Chafes X Alberto Giacometti: Gris Vide Cris III, organised in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, brings together the sculptures of both artists for the first time in the Netherlands. “Following the successful exhibition of Ryan Gander X Edgar Degas, the Beelden aan Zee museum once again has the opportunity to bring together two great masters in a unique encounter,” says Brigitte Bloksma, director and co-curator of the exhibition. “The architecture of our museum, with its natural play of light, provides the ideal setting for this encounter, in which Chafes introduces us to Giacometti’s work in a new way. It is an exhibition that is not only meant to be seen, but also to be experienced.” 

Grey, Emptiness, Scream

The concept of Gris, Vide, Cris — Grey, Emptiness, Scream — is taken from Giacometti’s poem of the same name and encapsulates the thematic essence of the extraordinary encounter between the two artists. For Chafes, the grey refers to the moment between visibility and disappearance, the emptiness to the space in which that experience takes shape, and the scream to the intensity of the human experience. The exhibition unfolds precisely in that in-between space, where Giacometti’s fragile human figures resonate within Chafes’s quiet, contemplative world. 

The sculptural work La Nuit is one of the highlights of the exhibition. Rui Chafes designed this iron structure around Giacometti’s first plaster study, Le Nez (1947–1950), commissioned by the Fondation Giacometti in 2018. In that year, the first Gris Vide Cris exhibition was organised at the French branch of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti. Five years later, this collaboration led to a new exhibition at the main building of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. For Gris Vide Cris III at the Beelden aan Zee museum, curators Brigitte Bloksma and Helena Freitas selected ten sculptures by Giacometti which serve as the starting point for Chafes’ series of sculptures, several of which were created especially for this occasion. 

Dark installations with architectural corridors

At the heart of the exhibition lies not only the body as sculpture, but also the body in relation to space and the visitor. The interplay between Giacometti and Chafes reveals a vision of humanity that is as fragile as it is timeless. Whilst Giacometti’s elongated figures balance between materiality and stillness, Chafes, with his iron sculptures, explores the boundaries between physicality and emptiness. He invites visitors to step inside his works. Au-delà des yeux and Lumière are dark installations featuring architectural corridors in which various sculptures by Giacometti can be viewed in a completely different light. Through these works, the Portuguese artist presents the human figure as a transient apparition in an infinite space. This creates a powerful tension between fragility and monumentality, and between form and the invisible. 

About Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti studied drawing, painting and sculpture, first for a short time in Geneva and then in Paris. He soon turned away from the academic tradition as he became increasingly interested in Cubist sculpture and non-Western art forms, and eventually joined the Surrealist group. From his modest studio in Paris, the artist collaborated with the Surrealists until he was expelled from the group in 1935 due to his renewed focus on modelling from direct observation. 

During and after the Second World War, Giacometti developed increasingly smaller and more slender figures, which reflect the strife and alienation of that era. The insignificance of humankind is powerfully expressed in his thin, elongated forms, which almost seem to dissolve into space. These figures, simultaneously present and absent, convey a sense of loneliness and existential uncertainty. Giacometti sought to make tangible the elusive sense of human presence and inner life. His paintings and drawings also bear witness to this ongoing quest, through which he created an exceptional body of work that continues to inspire to this day.

About Rui Chafes

Rui Chafes studied sculpture in Lisbon and continued his studies at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under Gerhard Merz. Whilst a student, Chafes translated Novalis’s Fragments into Portuguese and published them in a book accompanied by drawings. He was deeply influenced by the Romantic poet and his ideas on melancholy, the longing for death and the night, as keys to understanding reality and the ‘true’ human soul. Novalis’s assertion that all forces of nature form a single, all-encompassing force became the guiding principle for Chafes’s abstract and sometimes semi-figurative sculptures. 

Chafes belongs to a generation of artists who are redefining sculpture as a spiritual experience. Since the 1990s, he has been building a consistent body of work comprising iron sculptures, often matt black and closed in form, yet imbued with an intense emotional charge. Entirely in the spirit of late Romanticism, they refer not only to the emptiness of human existence, but also to the ambivalence of the body as both a ‘cage’ in which the ‘self’ is trapped and a protective armour that shields the inner self from a physically and mentally threatening environment. His sculptures are not cast but folded from sheet steel, and thus emerge ‘out of nothing’. Despite their considerable weight, their pure form and the apparent absence of materiality make them seem almost to float. They occupy a space between perception and reality, between life and death, between mind and body. This disorienting effect, combined with the romantic and existential themes—atypical for our times—that evoke ‘forgotten’ feelings of loneliness, detachment and melancholy, makes Rui Chafes one of the most relevant sculptors of our time.