Ann Veronica Janssens’ main focus is to investigate the perception of reality by dematerializing it through various means, primarily light. Since the late 1980s, Janssens has in fact developed an artistic practice based on light, colour and natural optical phenomena. The artist is always experimenting with the distinctive features of carefully chosen materials (glass, mirrors, aluminium, artificial fog), shapes and light, making them interact with our perception of reality, to create a recurrent vocabulary of minimalistic motifs and beautiful colours.
Her conscious use of light is driven by the desire to show reality in a different and unusual way. Ann Veronica does not try to grasp the impalpable but instead chooses to experiment with its multiple forms and expressions. For her, art consists not of an object in itself but in the experience that the object is able to activate in its viewer. The sculpture becomes a place of perception. Consequently, the tools and the palette of her works are in constant change: they depend on the sensation and the experience perceived by each viewer. In this way, sculpture is not the object of perception – it is perception that becomes sculpture. Ann Veronica Janssens seeks to increase our awareness of these fleeting sensory phenomena, yet the journey is always unpredictable and extremely personal.

The show is conceived with new and previous works dialoguing together, where most of them but not exclusively, are made of glass. For example, a series of photos, 5 Lines of Pink in the Air, Randomly, 2020 show pink streaks produced by clouds of water vapour, artificial by-product of the movement of airplanes in the sky, reflecting the light of the setting sun into the celestial expanse.
In another room a glass ring, Blue Glass Roll 405/2, 2019 evokes movement and time. Small nebulae of air bubbles can be seen in the material, trying to escape during the long cooling process in an expanding effort. In this piece Ann Veronica exploited the point at which glass appears to be blue rather than transparent.

Another sculpture, Atlantic, 2020 consists of a superimposition of glass plates printed in relief whose superimposition recalls the movement, the force of inertia and the density of water. Atlantic is a variation of a proposal created temporarily for the first time in 1990 for an exhibition in Antwerp.
A block of optical glass, Untitled, 2019 captures the space and colours of the place. It retains the shape of the raw casting captured during its cooling.
Walking through the exhibition the viewer will come across a gilded circular thatch sculpture. It acts like a blink to the burning radiation. The gold and its glow are a metaphor of the earthly and cosmic, the tangible and the intangible.

In the second room of the gallery is exhibited a triptych of Gaufrettes series, Bright Yellow, Bright Pink, Pinky Sunset R, 2020, which highlights the pictorial materiality and spatiality of colour itself.

Paradoxically it is in her seemingly most static works, the Gaufrettes (Wafers) or the Magic Mirrors, that Janssens codifies the simplest, most instantaneous preconditions for her experiments. Not immediately graspable, these « performing sculptures » - these color machines - are unassertive, potentially elusive amalgams of apparition and disappearance that yield themselves only in response to the viewer’s attentiveness and bodily movement. (Nathalie Ergino)


Ann Veronica Janssens was born in Folkestone (U.K.) in 1956. She studied at L’École de la Cambre in Brussels and she lives and works in Brussels.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Ann Veronica Janssens, Hot Pink Turquoise, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark & South London Gallery, London (2020); Dongdaemun Design Plaza (Ddp), Seoul, South Korea; Ann Veronica Janssens, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, USA (2016), Ann Veronica Janssens: yellowbluepink, Wellcome Collection, London, UK (2015-2016), ‘A’, S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium (2015), Philaetchouri, with Michel François, Foundation d’Enterprise Hermès, Brussels, Belgium (2015), Museo Cappella San Severo, with Nord Project / Laurent Jacob, Naples (2014); Ann Veronica Janssens: Septembre, FRAC Corse, France (2013); Ulysses – Ecplipse, Eglise Saint-Honorat des Alyscamps, Arles, France (2013); Ann Veronica Janssens, Chapelle St. Vincent de Grignan, France (2013); Ann Veronica Janssens, Kunsthalle Münster, Münster, Germany (2010); Serendipity, WIELS, Brussels, Belgium (2009).
Among the others, group exhibitions include: Neem je tijd / Take Your Time, Museum M, Leuven, Belgium and Den Frie, Copenhagen, Denmark (2020); Thirsty, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Luoga e Segni, Punta Della Dogana, Fondation Pinault, Venice, Italy (2019); Shifting Spaces (working title), Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2018); Petra Cortright, Ann Veronica Janssens, Judy Ledgerwood, Ana Prvacki & Rirkrit Tiravanija, 1301PE, Los Angeles, USA (2017); Manifesta 10, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2014); Des choses en moins, des choses en plus, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2014); Before The Horizon, Fundacio Juan Miro, Barcelona, Spain (2013); Museum to Scale 1/7, Fine Arts Museum, Brussels, Belgium (2013), travelled to Kunsthalle Rotterdam, Rotterdam and Baker Museum, Naples, USA (2014); Lumineux! Dynamique! Espace et vision dans l’art de nos jours à 1913, Grand Palais, Paris, France (2013) and the Light Show, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2012) travelled to Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zeland (2014), to Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia (2015), to Sharjah Art Foundation CorpArtes, Santiago, Chile (2016).