View of the exhibition ‘Rui Chafes X Alberto Giacometti. Gris, Vide, Cris III’. © Alberto Giacometti Estate. ADAGP, Paris 2026 / Pictoright, Amsterdam, 2026. Photo: Studio Gerrit Schreurs.
Rui Chafes X Alberto Giacometti
Gris, Vide, Cris III
Museum Beelden aan Zee, Den Haag: 26 Jun 2026 – 09 Jan 2027
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon: 18 May – 22 Sep 2023
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Paris: 03 Oct – 16 Dec 2018
The Museum Beelden aan Zee, in the Netherlands, is opening its doors to a dialogue between two voices of contemporary sculpture – Alberto Giacometti (Borgonovo, Bregaglia, Switcerland, 1901 – Chur, Switzerland, 1966) and Rui Chafes (Lisbon, 1966) – in a partnership between the Giacometti Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
In this exhibition, curated by Helena de Freitas and Brigitte Bloksma, the title ‘Gris, Vide, Cris III’ acts as a silent key to unspoken layers.
It suggests rhythmic tensions between presence and absence. While Alberto Giacometti uses delicate lines to mark the emptiness that inhabits bodies, Rui Chafes responds with metallic structures that seem to breathe slowly.
A dense atmosphere settles throughout the exhibition spaces. Each work occupies the floor or is suspended from the ceiling with almost discreet intention. Visitors move around inside elongated figures, visual skeletons made from wire and shadow. Some pieces date from the 1930s (Giacometti’s pieces), and others were completed just months before the opening (Chafes’ works). There is a multiple and deliberately disorganised temporality at play here.
Although chronologically separate, both artists find themselves seeking to give form to that which is not shown at first sight – be it existence, emptiness, fragile weightlessness or the invisible dimension of human experience. As Alberto Giacometti works to reduce the human figure to the limits of fragility, Rui Chafes explores iron as if seeking to combine solidity and ethereal transparency. His works hover there, at the point where weight meets the idea of disappearance.
A highlight among the works on display is ‘La Nuit’ [The Night] (2018), a sculpture created by Chafes based on ‘Le Nez’ [The Nose] (1947–1950), a key work by Giacometti. In a similar vein to the rest of the pieces exhibited, the Portuguese artist develops devices to alter the perception of the space and the gaze, offering a fresh approach to the Swiss modernist’s sculptures. Also worth noting is the work from the CAM Collection, ‘Tu nem sequer me vês’ [You don’t even see me] (2021), by Rui Chafes.
This is the third iteration of the exhibition ‘Gris, Vide, Cris’, previously shown in Paris and Lisbon, and this time at the Museum Beeldan aan Zee. In the Hague, there is a significant change in the exhibition, influenced by the physical structure and the daytime lighting of the space, intensifying contrasts such as bulk versus fragility, or the absence of sound versus appearance.