At that time, he started working on a series of “pavement sculptures”. Equipped with his camera and strolling through the streets, he took pictures of certain details on construction sites, isolating a concrete block, a cone, or a spirit level left on the ground, in which he sensed a potential sculpture. Within the eclectic and multifaceted body of work produced by Raymond Hains, similarities with the surrealist aesthetic and particularly with principles expressed by André Breton are to be found. André Breton described the world as “sudden parallels, petrifying coincidences (…) and the kind of association of ideas they provoke - a way of transforming a gossamer into a spider web” in the book Nadja published in 1962. In 2001, the Centre Georges Pompidou devoted an important retrospective exhibition to Raymond Hains in Paris: "La tentative" ("The Endeavour").