Image: Beelden aan Zee, London
Museum Beelden aan Zee has opened 'Rui Chafes X Alberto Giacometti. Gris, Vide, Cris III', a new international exhibition that pairs the work of Portuguese sculptor Rui Chafes with that of Swiss modernist Alberto Giacometti. The show runs from 26 June 2026 to 9 January 2027 at Museum Beelden aan Zee in Den Haag and is presented in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti in Paris and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
The museum describes the exhibition as a third chapter in the 'Gris, Vide, Cris' series, a project that began in 2018. According to the museum’s exhibition page, the presentation brings Giacometti’s sculpture together with Chafes’ installation-based practice, using Chafes’ iron structures to create a new, quieter and more sensory encounter with Giacometti’s best-known works. Curators Helena de Freitas and Brigitte Bloksma shape the display.
In the museum’s account, the two artists are linked by a shared concern with transcendence and with making the invisible visible. Giacometti’s work, the text says, uses reduction to explore the relation between body, space and spirit, while Chafes pushes against the limits of iron. The title itself is drawn from Giacometti’s poem 'Gris, Vide, Cris' — grey, emptiness, scream — and is used by the museum to frame the exhibition’s central tensions around presence and absence, silence and intensity.
One of the highlighted works is 'La Nuit', an iron structure Chafes designed around Giacometti’s plaster study 'Le Nez' (1947–1950) for the Fondation Giacometti in 2018. The museum says that in this exhibition Chafes’ dark installations, including 'Au-delà des yeux' and 'Lumière', set Giacometti’s figures within long architectural passages, altering how the sculptures are seen. The exhibition page also notes that ten sculptures by Giacometti were selected as a starting point for a series of works by Chafes, several made especially for this occasion.
Beelden aan Zee says the show is the first time the sculptors’ works are shown together in the Netherlands. In a statement on the exhibition page, director and co-curator Brigitte Bloksma says the museum’s architecture and natural light make it a suitable setting for the encounter, and that the exhibition is one “that not only wants to be seen, but also experienced.” The museum’s newsletter similarly places the Chafes-Giacometti display at the centre of a reopened museum programme after a renovation and the introduction of a redesigned entrance area, Bistro BAZ and a new museum shop.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogued publication, 'Rui Chafes X Alberto Giacometti. Gris, Vide, Cris III', published by Waanders. The museum store lists the book at €35, with a planned publication date of 17 July 2026; the newsletter says the catalogue appears on 18 July. Museum Beelden aan Zee also lists related public programming around the exhibition, including a Vrije Academie lecture on 7 and 21 September and a Masterclass Tekenen Giacometti on 23 August, while the exhibition itself remains on view through 9 January 2027.
