Imploded Column (Dancer)
Imploded Column (Dancer), 2010
Ewerdt Hilgemann (1938- )
Stainless Steel
Fine Art Ordinance Obligation
Ewerdt Hilgemann, a German artist who lives and works in the Netherlands, has been making his "implosion sculptures" since 1984. Always working with a geometric vocabulary, Hilgemann builds simple, hollow three-dimensional shapes - usually rectangular - and pulls the air out of them, causing them to collapse into themselves. The crumpled boxes take on a new expressivity, even pathos. They have become less monumental and more vulnerable, and even seem human.