





















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























































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"My first «constructions», made during the mid-80s, were spatial extensions of existing architecture. These graftings at once formed and gave onto what I call «super spaces» : the spaces surrounding a given space, spaces without space, places for the capture of light, cement and glass cases, spaces conceived as springboards towards the void. It is this void that I try to set in motion, conferring upon it a kind of temporality. I always experiment with the possibilities of rendering fluid the perception of matter or architecture which I see as some kind of obstacle to movement and sculpture. My use of light to infiltrate matter and architecture is undertaken with a view to provoking a perceptual experience wherein this materiality is made unstable, its resistance dissolved. This movement is often provoked by the brain itself. My projects are often based on technical or scientific facts. The resulting plastic proposition is then akin to a laboratory revealing its discoveries.” - Ann Veronica Janssens
For more than twenty years, Ann Veronica Janssens's (b. 1956 in Folkestone, England) work has been widely recognized for its ability to challenge and experiment with the definition of perception. Through her motifs of abstraction, mirroring, and light, Janssens deliberately displaces and transforms specific materials to explore what she terms the ‘ungraspable’. Drawing on scientific research, Janssens aims to create situations that can resemble laboratory experiments as much as works of art by drawing abstraction from the real with ultra minimal action. Everything is surface with Janssens, but in a revelatory form of negation. Janssens’s work exhibits formal affinities with minimalism and the California Light and Space movements of the 1960s and 70s, yet eschews their penchant for monumentality in favor of the intimate, subjective experience of the individual. Whereas minimal art often reduced forms to achieve an often monumental fetishism of the material, the raw simplicity of Janssens’ proposals offers the possibility of naked experience. Ann Veronica Janssen’s oeuvre pioneers a new understanding of the political potential of abstract which does not passively yield its meaning to the viewer but creates it anew – an art perceived not only through the retina but experienced viscerally.
Ann Veronica Janssens
Grand Bal
2023
English/Italian
23 x 30,50 cm, 304 pages
ISBN 979-12-5463-088-4
Curated by Roberta Tenconi
Texts by Philippe Bertels, Robin Clark, Kersten Geers, Maud Hagelstein, Stéphane Ibars, Ann Veronica Janssens, Jelena Pančevac, Roberta Tenconi, Ernst van Alphen
The monograph “Grand Bal” accompanies Ann Veronica Janssens’ retrospective exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca. The editorial project, realized in close collaboration with the artist and designed by Studio Otamendi, traces her 40-year career by presenting a wide selection of historical works and new productions documented by a detailed iconographic archive. By analyzing the conceptual development and formal variations, the volume provides a plurality of perspectives on this body of work through a text by writer Philippe Bertels, essays by art historians Robin Clark, Ernst van Alphen and Stéphane Ibars, a contribution by architects Kersten Geers and Jelena Pančevac, and one by philosopher Maud Hagelstein. The book is enriched by an extensive documentation of the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca that presents for the first time the most comprehensive selection of her works, also narrated through a conversation between Ann Veronica Janssens and exhibition curator Roberta Tenconi.
Ann Veronica Janssens
Ann Veronica Janssens
Distinctive, precise and systematic, the art of Ann Veronica Janssens is unparalleled in contemporary art history. The Belgian artist represents a post-minimalist generation of artists who employ various media of expression to process their perceptions of the world. Working primarily with light, she has created an interwoven oeuvre of installations comprising elements such as fog, sound and moving images, as well as projections, urban interventions and lyrical sculptural pieces. In the history of Light Art, Janssens falls somewhere between foregoing generations of artists such as James Turrell and Carlos Cruz-Diez and successors such as Olafur Eliasson and Haroon Mirza.
Texts by Marja Sakari, Clélia Zernik, Laura Lindstedt.
Published by the Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne, with Kiasma, Helsinki.
Softcover, 184 pages
ISBN 9789527067741
Ann Veronica Janssens
Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name organized by the Nasher Scultpreu Center, presented at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas.
2016 Nasher Sculpture Center
ISBN: 978-0-9912338-2-3
Ann Veronica Janssens
Serendipity
This publication derives from Ann Veronica Janssens' solo exhibition at WIELS, entitled Serendipity, constructed around a set of works outlining her artistic research over the last few decades. This catalogue attempts to account for these phenomena, beginning with photographic documentation of the Serendipity exhibition in the specific spatial context of the premises at WIELS.
Publisher: WIELS
Texts by Dirk Snauwaert, Charles Goby and Mieke Bal
ISBN 978-9-07893-715-9
An artist book, Chappelle Saint Vincent Grignan, beautifully documents Ann Veronica Janssens's 2013 light installations at the Saint Vincent Chapel in Brussels. The project was made in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Communication. The artist book is available through Ronny Van de Velde and comes in an edition of 60.
The visual and thematic record of the 2012 Biennale of Sydney encapsulates the themes of the exhibition and reproductions of works of over 200 artists through a 160 page split binding device that gives the reader the ability to reconfigure the intended curation to create new relationships and meanings between the works.
Publisher: Biennale of Sydney Ltd
ISBN: 978-0-646-57199-7
Ann Veronica Janssens
HOT PINK TURQUOISE
The exhibition introduces the work of Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens. Her artistic technique could be defined as an exploration of the sensory experience of reality. Through various media (installations, projections, immersive environments, urban interventions, sculptures), Ann Veronica Janssens invites the viewer to cross into a new sensory space on the borderline of dizziness and dazzlement. Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, South London Gallery.
157 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-87-93659-27-8
An intimate dialogue between the works of the two artists over four decades.
Since meeting in 1985, Ann Veronica Janssens and Michel François have orbited each other, drawing close at times, and growing distant, even estranged, at others. This book stages an intimate dialogue between their work, tracing the "muted liaisons and subtle tensions," as writes Palais de Tokyo director Guillaume Désanges, which course below the surface of two remarkably distinct oeuvres. In addition to one-hundred-sixty artworks, this landmark publication gathers an extensive collection of research and personal photographs across four decades of practice.
Published by Zolo Press
24,8 x 29,5 cm (softcover)
336 pages (ill.)
ISBN : 978-1-7345275-9-9
EAN : 9781734527599