Ann Veronica Janssens

Light, color and space are the fundamental materials used by Ann Veronica Janssens (Folkestone, 1956). With these intangible phenomena she creates 'sculptures' that make the invisible visible. Architecture is, by nature, static; whereas light and color remain changeable. That is what Janssens investigates while, throughout the process, she experiments and sets people and things in motion. Her work, based on sensory perception, demands the active involvement of the viewer.

With her interventions Ann Veronica Janssens turns the museum's 'white cube' into an indefinable space filled with colorful mist. Despite the presence of light, we need to grope to find our way. The disorientation makes us wonder: just how big is this place? And – am I alone? Gradually the limits of the space become discernible, and people begin to loom forth in it. The artist challenges us and puts our senses to the test. What are we actually seeing and experiencing here?

In developing her ideas, the artist has a preference for uncomplicated geometric forms. An aquarium, for instance, filled with water, paraffin and alcohol. Due to the reflection and refraction of light, surfaces of color visually interact with the fluids in a refined manner. And as the viewer walks around it, new 'images' continue to arise and then vanish, as ephemerally as a rainbow, in the blink of an eye. Five of these 'aquaria' have been placed alongside each other in the exhibition. A surprising number of variations in form and color proves to be possible, just as in the paintings of Mondrian, where endless variations of horizontal and vertical lines and primary colors were carried out. But with Janssens the changes take place in a single artwork, before the viewer’s very eyes and in three dimensions.

The decision to use geometric forms bears a relationship to abstract and concrete art from the early half of the twentieth century. Not only to the work of artists such as Mondrian and Van Doesburg, but also that of the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy, who was already experimenting with space, light and movement during the 1920s. The work of Janssens shows, for that matter, similarities not only with modernist art from the early twentieth century, but also with the work of contemporary artists such as James Turrell and Anish Kapoor. Both Turrell and Kapoor, whose work is permanently on display at De Pont, evoke new visual sensations with simple natural phenomena that include light, color, mirroring and reflection.

We can, in any case, conclude that Ann Veronica Janssens evokes wonder with works that are unusual and ordinary. It’s a bit like the experience of an airplane traveler taking off on a dreary grey day and then passing through a dense layer of clouds. In the luminous white surroundings where patches of fog rush by, points of orientation such as above/below and far/close disappear. Once the plane has risen above the clouds, sunshine abounds. There the bright blue sky offers endless vistas, while an occasional cloud floats by. A Janssens exhibition feels like a rite of passage: ordinary phenomena suddenly assume magical power.