At some point in the 1990s, I come across a 500 Swiss franc banknote. I’m fascinated by the motif on the back of the note. It depicts a purple orchis, a muscular human torso and the two lungs. The banknote, designed in the 1970s by the graphic artist couple Ernst and Ursula Hiestand is dedicated to the eighteenth-century Swiss polymath Albrecht von Haller and his scientific studies. I make a drawing of the lungs in my sketchbook and then forget all about it.

In autumn 2017, when photographs are taken of my Two Chambers bowl, I suddenly wonder: How could the wall of the Two Chambers bowl be extended upwards? How would the Two Chambers look as a closed vessel?

I remember the two lungs shown on the banknote (now no longer in circulation) and, looking through my sketchbooks, I find the drawing again. I make new sketches and now also clay models. I decide — unlike in the case of the Two Chambers bowl — to separate the two organs and to make the individual lung an independent object.

The asymmetry and the juxtaposition of clearly defined edges and bulbous volume lend the sculptures a peculiar tension. Assembled into a group, the carafes take on the appearance of human figures, smart and nimble, but weighty and making their presence felt.

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