Shannon McGill Senior Portfolio: Artist-Raphael Hefti

I was originally introduced to Raphel Hefti's series "Estheticiennes" by Tom, but found myself relating to the artist's completely different series "Disco" as well. The first series is portraits of several department store beauty clerks made up in their own products and shows the shockingly homogenized result of all of their appearances next to each other. I found this interesting when thinking about my own work dealing with being a twin and making portraits like that in a similar way. The "Disco" series is striking to me. The artist presents landscapes and unusual powerful light in a stunning way. I am creating sort of surreal landscapes myself and am very inspired by the way Hefti transforms land and light in to something beyond.

"Prompted by the onslaught of digitally crafted photography, Disco attempts to document a magical momentary fiction, created through the culmination of a recipe of weather balloons, electronics, patient volunteers and light bombs." http://legmountain.com/category/raphael-hefti/

"On the whole I would say that entropy contradicts the usual notion of a mechanistic world view. In other words it's a condition thats irreversible, it's a condition that's moving towards a glacial equilibrium and it's suggested in many ways" -Robert Smithson in Uber Entropy in Entropy Made Visible

Raphael Hefti now lives and works in Zurich. He was trained and exhibited throughout the world, mostly in Switzerland, and recently in London. He makes art about a continually expanding range of topics, from ballistic test sites to the transition to digital photography.