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The sacred and the profane

Ingo Maurer’s disconcerting light sculptures feature in a delightful display at a deconsecrated city-centre church become temporary showroom. #MDW2016

Having abandoned Spazio Krizia, the traditional venue for his inventive lighting, and an orphan of Euroluce, this year Ingo Maurer chose the deconsecrated church of San Paolo in Converso – home of Massimiliano Locatelli’s CLS Architetti – to showcase his substantial collection.

Ingo Maurer, More Maurer, Fuorisalone 2016

The church’s late-Renaissance architecture provided the perfect backdrop, highlighting by contrast the German designer’s intriguing and ironic silhouettes. The chosen exhibition design also facilitated the visitor route with classic Ingo Maurer designs set up in the side chapels and his latest creations concentrated in the central space.

Large white tables featured a number of the new Keep Balance and Ru Ku Ku table-lamps – with the bulb on one side and a disc or large egg on the other, balancing each other as if on scales and both fixed to a metal rod. “I adore simple things that require little explanation,” says Maurer. “I have always loved incandescent light bulbs. I have also been ‘experimenting’ and ‘playing’ with the form of the egg for some time. It all started with Piero della Francesca. Make sure you watch the egg.” Hanging from the lamps were two large site-specific ring installations, worked by a smartphone app.

New ideas presented this year also included Flatterby, an oversized bulb with a white, 3D printed anti-glare ring, available in a limited edition of 200 pieces. Ten hand-made models of insects buzzed around its bulb.