Gunda Förster is a light artist who was born in Berlin Germany in 1967. Her art focuses on spacial awareness and architectural lighting. She is a professor of Architecture and Design at Universität Der Künste in Berlin. During this time in Germany there was civil unrest, poverty, and oppression. I think this comes out in her work. It is very subtle and industrial. She almost exclusively works in architectural art forms and uses light to enhance them and highlight spacial awareness. For context, the Berlin wall was torn down when she was 22.

This exhibit titled white noise employs all senses in connecting with the audience. In this exhibit there are multiple rooms that employ various sensory changes to invoke an emotional reaction from the audience. She uses varying degrees of light from blindingly bright to soft and warm to headlamps to evoke emotional responses from the viewers. She uses sounds to mimic and add motion to her work, these tones can be so intense that they cause the room to vibrate. She also changes the temperatures in the rooms to add the the sensory experience of the exhibit. She adds all these elements to mimic movement without any moving pieces.

This work by Gunda replaces all of the billboards in a local train station with plain red to allow the viewer to take a deeper dive into the architecture of the train station. the red contrasts with the cook industrial lights and really allows you to appreciate the station more cohesively, much more than a single piece of art would. The red contrasts especially well with the mustard yellow trains. She did this to oppose traditional public works of art like paintings or sculptures that bring your attention to the art as opposed to the space.

This is a concept piece Gunda did for a potential entrance hall. The idea behind this piece is to highlight the motion of light in an everyday setting. In this proposal there would be five spotlights along the entryway that would turn on when someone passed through the area where there would be light. The lights would be the same size as the cells in the top of the louvre. When they turned on the theory would be to alarm the passerby enough that they would look up and appreciate the surroundings in the building. This element of unusual motion in light is a common theme in much of Gunda’s work.

This is an instillation Gunda designed for a bridge in Berlin. She installed bright lights underneath the bridge that would turn on when it got dark to shine on the water. This reflects onto the bridge and creates the appearance that the bridge is also in motion. This is unlike much of her typical work because she is highlighting a part of the natural world as opposed to architecture. It is a beautiful example of the combination of architecture, light, and motion that Gunda embodies. She uses the movement in the water to create a subtle but ever changing piece of light art.