Galerie Jamar

The Antwerp visionary artist Panamarenko (1940-2019) built the first Bing in 1997 as a floating sculpture of balsa wood and plexiglass, equipped with a motor with a magnetic drive. His interest in flying saucers and their propulsion mechanisms has been growing since the 1960s. He explores the various possibilities of using the existing magnetic fields in space as “cosmic highways” on which his flying saucers can float between the planets. For this space project, which he continues to expand and improve since the 1970s, he comes up with the comprehensive title “Journey to the Stars”. Influenced by ufology and numerous science fiction films, he designs the “Adamski Saucer” and the “Flying Cigar called Flying Tiger”, among others. In 1997, his fascination for the cosmos resulted in the ultimate project “Ferro Lusto”, which he describes as “a spaceship eight hundred meters long and capable of carrying four thousand men”. Panamarenko describes the "Ferro Lusto" as the aircraft carrier that has various transporters on board, which he calls the "Bings". His flying saucer “Bing of the Ferro Lusto” must therefore be seen as part of a much larger whole, able to move between the planets and the spaceship carrier. The engines he uses for the flying saucer are called “Bings”. “Those were engines with a carburetor that happened to be called like that, Bing was written on it, and hence the name”. On the occasion of Panamarenko's sixtieth birthday, a stamp is issued in February 2000 on which an image of the Bing of the Ferro Lusto can be seen. In 2004, in collaboration with his gallery “Antwerpse Luchtschipbouw”, Panamarenko has a bronze version produced on 7 copies, one will be installed in 2020 on “Panamarenkoplein” in Antwerp’s “Nieuw Zuid”.