Johanna Grawunder

Johanna Grawunder’s unique and singular creative work invites us to enter a space without harshness. With absolute mastery she puts together a proposition that, as is her wont, takes its inspiration from the colours of the light spectrum.

In an inhabited space, she imagines four variations in shape, modulating coloured shadows: the RedDevil table, the BlackDot garden table, the PinkVoid floor lamp and the GoldBar ceiling light. She samples an intimate atmosphere by scattering zones of colour and gives us a unique landscape where each shape performs a functional task, diffusing an aura of colour that is distilled like a sign, a subtle presence.

Artist or designer? The fusion of genres occurs in a unique and remarkable fashion. Her quest draws on the sources of kinetic art, an art of the environment and a reflection on spectator participation whose optical perception she influences. Light becomes the element of creation, a reflection that also motivates the American artist James Turrell and his “perceptual environments”.

With No Whining On The Yacht, Johanna Grawunder serves an atmospheric quest for well-being, inspired by her contemplation of nature; and shares the elusive beauty of colour.

Johanna Grawunder is an architect and designer who splits her time between her native California and Italy where, while working with Ettore Sottsass from 1985 to 2001, she learned more than just style, she gained a vision of the design process as a whole.

In 2001, she opened two studios, one in San Francisco and one in Milan, where she develops her architectural projects, installations and carries out her own personal work.

Anne Bony, Paris, 2013