CL2 Blue Shadow, CL9 Pink Shadow, Sunset B, 2018
Ann Veronica Janssens

© Bildrecht, Vienna, Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen | Courtesy the artist | Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Bildrecht, Vienna, Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen | Courtesy the artist | Esther Schipper, Berlin
© Bildrecht, Vienna, Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen | Courtesy the artist | Esther Schipper, Berlin
Collection

Three panels of annealed glass with PVC filter
230 x 45 x 1.2 cm (each)

Since the 1980s Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens has been developing an experimental body of work focused on in-situ installations using apparently simple, and at times even intangible, materials like glass, light, sound, and artificial fog. Her visceral artistic propositions explore the permeability of contexts, inviting the viewers to position themselves near a threshold of visual, psychological, and temporal instability. The triptych CL2 Blue Shadow, CL9 Pink Shadow and Sunset B, with a different colored PVC filter applied to each of the three glass panels, creates iridescent reflections and chromatic variations of blue, pink, and orange depending on the angle of the viewer. 
 
Once she selects a specific site, different elements, forms, and volumes are added to the architecture, modifying the preexisting environment and challenging the stable perception of the space. Janssens, who originally wanted to be an architect, has adopted and brought together the interplay of geometry and light in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s designs with the atmospheric light variations in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she grew up. Interested in what escapes her, rather than in what can be defined, Janssens develops a poetics of the ungraspable and opaque. In this liminal state her work opens up all the potentiality of a space to morph into something other, translated into tactile experiences. Through their mere presence, movement, and immersion, the audience members participate in a subtle activation of the works.

PAST LOANS

Group exhibition: Abundant Futures
Venue: C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba  
Curator: Daniela Zyman
Exhibition 1 April 2022 - 5 March 2023
Born in Folkestone, United Kingdom, in 1956. Lives in Brussels, Belgium.