Amorphous textures, fluid shapes and organic elements. FLOWAIR is the great site-specific installation signed by the team of Ingo Maurer – who already last year had chosen to involve the public space of Porta Nuova with a large experimental setting of lights and reflections – at BASE at miart 2024.
With FLOWAIR this year Ingo Maurer, consistent with the choice to create unique interventions “tailor-made for the place”, will offer through the installation a show of lights and colors both day and night, open to all kinds of interpretation, according to the principles of Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art.
Using light as material, Ingo Maurer reminds visitors of the movement of air and its importance, bringing the wind back into people’s lives, to the place where they meet.
Axel Schmid is a German industrial designer, who has been working for the design team of Ingo Maurer since 1998 and is now Head of Product & Project Design of the Munich-based lighting company, which is specialised in the design of lamps and light installations.
Schmid was born 1971 in Nassau, Bahamas. After an apprenticeship in metal and woodworking, he matriculated at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, while studying in the classes of Prof. Klaus Lehmann und Prof. Richard Sapper. In 1997, he received his diploma in Industrial Design and went to Japan on a VDID scholarship. One year later, he began working for Ingo Maurer in Munich. Schmid has received various awards, including the Bavarian State Prize for Young Designers. His luminaire “Jetzt” is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Schmid has designed various lamps for Ingo Maurer, including “24 Karat Blau”, “5pack”, “Manifold”, “1000 Karat” and “Koyoo”. He has also worked with Ingo Maurer on light installations such as “Ablaze” (2011), “Broken Egg” (2013), “Torre Velasca” (2016 / 2019) and “Silver Cloud” (2020). In 2019 he became Head of Product & Project Design at Ingo Maurer.