Ann Veronica Janssens
© Ivan Put
Ergino Nathalie, Pontégnie Anne et Janssens Ann Veronica, Ann Veronica Janssens 8’26, exh. cat., MAC, Marseille (8 November – 8 February 2004), Paris, ENSBA/MAC, 2004
→François Michel, Ann Veronica Janssens: Are You Experienced ?, Bruxelles, Basepublishing, 2009
Serendipity, Wiels Centre d’Art Contemporain, Bruxelles, 2009
→Ann Veronica Janssens Mars, Institut d’art contemporain de Villeurbanne, 24 March – 7 May 2017
→Ann Veronica Janssens, 8’26’’, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Marseille, Marseille, 8 November 2003 – 8 February 2004
British visual artist.
After studying art history in England, Ann Veronica Janssens attended the La Cambre National School of Visual Arts, in Brussels. Since the mid-1980s, she has been developing a body of work placed under the aegis of experimentation, at once visual and sensory, intended to destabilize our perception of space and make light no longer an instrument but an actual subject. Her early works, the “super spaces”, which are extensions of existing architecture, like the Villa Gillet in Lyon (1989), illustrate her desire to abolish the rift between inner and outer space, and make our perception of architecture more fluid, by way of the circulation of light, which the artist would be endlessly using in its different formal possibilities, through the use of transparent elements (glass) and reflecting elements (mirrors); this diffuse matter enabled her to confront light with colour, smoke and space.
In the early 2000s, she inaugurated a series of works which would give rise to many variations: Blue, Red and Yellow and Light Games (2001) were presented as opaque environments, which spectators were invited to enter, thus finding themselves plunged in a colourful fog. There followed another series of fogs, such as Jamaican Color’s + 1 for Mlle Justine (2003) and Mukha d’Anvers (2007). From then on, the mixture of light, colours and fog gave rise to new works with an unstable material quality, including Bluette (2006), a blue star made of smoke and light spots. Through the use of light, she has experimented with various phenomena: dazzlements (Présentationd’un corps rond 2, 2001), luminous bombardments, retinal persistence, vertigo, saturation, speed, flashing lights; Donut (2003), a luminous trombinoscope, represents an excellent example of this. However, Janssens’s works are not attached to any form of monumentality; on the contrary, the means and forms are minimal, at the service of a poetic oeuvre, playing on the boundary between the visible and the invisible.
© 2013 Des femmes – Antoinette Fouque
© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
Ann Veronica Janssens, Cocktail Sculpture, 2008, glass, distilled water, paraffin oil, wooden base, 70 x 70 x 70 cm, Courtesy l’espace de l’art concret Mouans-Sartoux, © Photo: François Fernandez, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Représentation d’un corps rond, 1996–2001, cyberlight, gobo of engraved glass, fog machine, ⌀ 800 x 3,000 cm, Courtesy Kunstverein München, © Photo: Wilfried Petzi, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Untitled, 1985-2003, glass panes covering the Persian blinds of a building, dimensions variables, Courtesy Middelheimmuseum Antwerp, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Muhka, Anvers, 1997, artificial fog, natural light, dimensions variables, Courtesy M HKA Antwerp, © Photo: Philippe De Gobert, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, IPE 535, 2009, steel beam, paraffin oil, 20 x 535 x 9 cm, Courtesy WEILS Brussels, © Photo: Philippe De Gobert, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Rose, 2007, 7 light projectors, artificial haze, dimensions variable, ⌀ 360-400 cm, Courtesy Galleria Alfoso Artiaso Napels, © Photo: Luciano Romano, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Yellow Yellow, 2010, glass, paraffin oil, fluo serigraph, wooden base, 50 x 50 x 50 cm, Courtesy l’espace de l’art concret Mouans-Sartoux, © Photo: François Fernandez, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Blue, Red and Yellow, 2001-ongoing, steel, wood, polycarbonate, blue, red, and yellow films, fog machine, 365.8 x 470.5 x 933.1 cm, 144.02 x 185.24 x 367.36 in., Courtesy Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, L’ODRRE N’A PAS D’IPMROTNCAE, 2012, neon installation on top of a building at Plaine de Plainpalais, Geneva, Switzerland, Courtesy Ann Veronica Janssens and Neon parralax, © Photo: S. Fruehauf, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Magic Mirror (Blue), 2012, dichroïc polyester film, securit glass, float glass, 200 x 100 x 1.8 cm, Courtesy Galleria Alfonso Artiaco Napels, © Photo: Luciano Romano, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Chapelle Saint-Vincent Grignan, 2013, intervention with natural light and artificial light and color filters, © Photo: Isabelle Arthuis, © ADAGP, Paris
Ann Veronica Janssens, Untitled (Blue Glitter), 2015, polyester, dimensions variables, Courtesy S.M.A.K. Ghent, © Photo: Dirk Pauwels, © ADAGP, Paris
