For her extensive, large-scale installations, Liesl Raff employs a material that, through its physical properties, color, and smell, conjures fascinating situations. Raff uses latex—the milky sap of the rubber tree—in its liquid state, applying it with brushes to various surfaces, spilling it onto floors, processing the dried rubber sheets into sculptures, or casting the material into colorful cords, as in Verbindungsperson (Variante II) of the evn collection.

In her remarkable exhibition Liaison at fjk3– Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst, the work hung in 2023 from the center of the Secessionist tiled ceiling created by the Schwadron brothers, who had used the premises around 1930 as a showroom for their architectural ceramics production.

The associations evoked by the suspended latex ropes range from the tentacles of an octopus to bio‑inspired soft robots. More generally, Raff’s work leads deep into the art history of recent decades: to Claes Oldenburg’s XXL electric cables, to Eva Hesse and her pieces made of viscous, flexible materials, to Isa Genzken’s broad spectrum of fluid transitions. Themes of protection but also vulnerability emerge in atmospheric, site-specific settings that recall the antecâmaras of Brazilian architect Luis Barragán, whose transitional entrance spaces Raff admires.

“Latex is the kind of friend you would always wish for,” Liesl Raff says in an interview with Misong Kim in February 2025, “a good counterpart and a good companion at the same time. It has a good memory. It is dynamic and never static. It is unpredictable and has a mind of its own. But it is also gentle and cuddly and feels good. It is a friendly, positive material because it is enriching and never destructive.” Qualities that are important to the artist, who likes to surround herself with positive matter.

Raff makes use of the temporal dimension inherent in latex, as well as its potential for transformation. Her works are corporeal, process‑ or action‑oriented, combining post‑minimalist form and industrial elements with a palpable interest in painting. In the field of tension between chance and control, it is likely chance that, for Liesl Raff, serves as an impeccable companion on the slippery ice of life and art.

Text: Brigitte Huck