Inspiration – Expiration
Ewerdt Hilgemann & Eva‑Fiore Kovacovsky
Inspiration – Expiration explores breath as movement, force, and measure of time. Two artists from different generations, each with a distinct visual language, meet in a dialogue of form and stillness, implosion and growth.
Ewerdt Hilgemann works with air as a physical force. His stainless steel sculptures implode under vacuum, undergoing a controlled transformation of form and matter. What appears spontaneous is the result of decades of experience, acute understanding, and precise control over pressure, material, and volume. In this way, the invisible becomes visible: breath, force, time.
Eva‑Fiore Kovacovsky approaches breath through nature. Her photography and installations focus on light, leaves, and the passing of seasons. Using cyanotype and analogue techniques, she records subtle forms of growth, transience, and rhythm. Her images breathe slowly.
The title "Inspiration – Expiration" refers to the rhythm of breathing, but also to the space between inhalation and exhalation — a moment of transformation. In this in-between, tangible and conceivable worlds converge. Breath becomes force, image, and metaphor.
"Every breath is a merging of self and world." – Emanuele Coccia
Ewerdt Hilgemann (1938, Witten, Germany) has been exploring the boundaries of sculpture since the 1960s, through a systematic investigation of form, matter, and transformation. His early white wooden wall objects resonate with the ZERO movement. Later, as a conceptual sculptor, he worked with stone, steel, and geometric series, always considering positive and negative space. From the 1980s onwards, he has investigated natural forces and systematic variation as active components.
His work is in collections including the Kröller-Müller Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museum Haus Konstruktiv Zürich, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. In 2020, he held a solo exhibition at the Kröller-Müller Museum, and in 2014, he presented a series of 13 monumental sculptures on Park Avenue in New York.
Eva‑Fiore Kovacovsky (1980, Bern, Switzerland) has explored the relationship between humans and plants from the very start of her practice, working with analogue photography, cyanotypes, and herbaria. She engages with biological processes such as photosynthesis, translating them into photographic and experimental forms that render these processes tangible. In her work, plants function both as medium and collaborator. Light records contours, textures, and traces of organisms on photosensitive surfaces. Her works are created in the darkroom, outdoors at night, or in direct sunlight.
She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, and the Schule für Gestaltung, Basel. Her work has been shown at Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Aargauer Kunsthaus, C/O Berlin, Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthall Stavanger, Kunstraum Kreuzberg (Berlin), and Colomboscope (Sri Lanka). Her works are included in collections such as FOAM and Huis Marseille (Amsterdam), Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Swiss National Library (Bern), Kunstkredit Basel, Kunstmuseum Bern, and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2024, she has been working on Photosynthetic Cookbook within the Art & Ecology research group at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp.