Panamarenko (b. 1940) is the pseudonym of Belgian artist and sculptor Henry Van Herweg, an acronym for Pan American Airlines and Company. He began his career with performance and happenings, but later he developed a fascination with airplanes and human-powered flight. Famous for his fantastic flying and floating machines – submarines, airplanes, airships, flying saucers – he has been called an artist-inventor and compared to Leonardo da Vinci and Vladimir Tatlin.
Artist Thomas Saracino (b. 1973) trained as an architect, and employs his knowledge of building and engineering in his works. His ongoing series of huge installations, Cloud Cities, is a model for flying cities of the future, combining innovative engineering design and utopian fantasies of overcoming the forces of gravity. Visitors to his exhibitions can climb on and through his works, as with one of his most famous recent works, in orbit, presented in 2013 at the Ständehaus K21 in Düsseldorf, a giant spider web of steel wire.
