Les Formes du repos (The Forms of Rest, 2001–ongoing) by Raphaël Zarka (b. 1977, Montpellier) is a photographic series that records concrete industrial structures set in a landscape, selected by Zarka for their abstract geometric beauty. Removed from their context, these forms become artworks in their own right, or, in Zarka’s words, ‘involuntary sculptures’. They are extremely diverse in nature, ranging from a monorail to sections of a pipeline and abandoned skateparks. The first photograph in the series shows a breakwater in the form of a rhombicuboctahedron, a twenty-six-sided polyhedron identified by Archimedes (b. 287 bce, Syracuse – d. 212 bce, Syracuse). This shape fascinates Zarka, so much so that he has attempted to catalogue all of its manifestations. Les Formes du repos n° 2evokes the ‘City of Immortality’ described by Jorge Luis Borges (b. 1899, Buenos Aires – d. 1986, Geneva) in his book The Aleph (1949), with its ‘incredible inverted staircases, their steps and balustrades hanging upside down’. Zarka sees formal language as inexhaustible and seeks to underline the permanence of forms across time.