Ann Veronica Janssens

Ann Veronica Janssens is a Belgian contemporary visual artist born in 1956 in Folkestone, United Kingdom. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. Her work is an invitation to ephemeral experiences, which are at times delirious or vertiginous, and lead to the loss of control or landmarks, generating a sentiment of visual, physical, temporal or psychological fragility.
Janssens has explored practical and theoretical research connecting space, time, body and brain, by bringing together artists and researchers in neurosciences, astrophysics, biology, geology, art history and philosophy.
In 2012 she was appointed Head of Studio at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Work
Janssens' work presents decisive visual experiences. Her work is inspired by nature, science, and minimalism. Variations in the atmospheric light in Kinshasa, the city in Congo where she grow up, made a deep impression on her, as did the handling of geometry and light in Mies van der Rohe's work, notably his Barcelona Pavilion. Originally she wanted to be an architect, like her father, but she began to move away from this discipline as it struck her as rather too functional. She explored artistic discoveries that included sculptures of Henry Moore, and was influenced by Maria Wierusz Kowalski (known as Tapta), with whom she had worked as assistant at La Cambre art school in Brussels.
Janssens mainly does site-specific works. She takes a specific space as her starting point and adds forms and volumes to the existing architecture. Often she chooses unexpected, unobvious places like a stairway, a ceiling or a window ledge. Her interventions bring the specific qualities of an environment to light. She sets out signposts intended to let viewers define themselves against reality. In what way does our point of view determine our perception? How does the viewer relate vis-à-vis a specific place?
For a public space art project such as The Neon Parallax in Geneva, for example, she used a misspelled text found on the ground as starting point for a large neon installation on the rooftop of a building.
Originally she worked chiefly with industrial materials – concrete, wood and glass – and primary forms. Since 1990 her work increasingly displays a more immaterial character: light, sound and fog instead of rough building materials. These works lead to a drastic total-experience that completely changes the viewer's perception of the space.
Further reading
Artist’s books
Ann Veronica Janssens. Chapelle Saint-Vincent Grignan, Ronny Van De Velde ed., Berchem, 2013
L’éclipse de l’objet, l’éclipse du sujet, l’éclipse de l’âme comme la neige, Nico Dockx, Ann Veronica Janssens, Jan Mast, Krist Torfs, 2010-2011
Experienced, Base Publishing, Brussels, 2009
0032 2, Edition Camille von Scholz, Brussels, 2001
Het raadsel van de verdwenen kat/l'énigme du chat perdu, Ann Veronica Janssens / Hans Theys, Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Brussels, 1999
Maroc 1993, Michel François / Ann Veronica Janssens, Fondation pour l'architecture, Bruxelles, 1993
Éclipse. Les artistes/the artists, Monika Droste / Michel Francois / Luc Grossen / Ann Veronica Janssens, Brussels, 1981
Essays
"Physical Realisations of the Unthinkable / Concrétisations physiques de l’impensable ", Guillaume Desanges, Catalogue S.M.A.K, 2015
"Women’s work Is never Done, An anthology", Catherine de Zegher, 2014
"Physical realisations of unthinkable", Guillaume Desange, 2015
"Endless andness the politic of abstraction according to Ann Veronica Janssens", Mieke Bal, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013
"Expérience esthétique et art contemporain", Marianne Massin, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013
"Woman Artists at the Millenium", Carol Armstrong & Catherine de Zegher, MIT press, 2006
"Quoting Caravaggio", Mieke Bal, The University of Chicago Press, 1999
"Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of Twentieth Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine ", Catherine de Zegher, MIT Press, 1996.
"Travelling concepts", Mieke Bal, University of Toronto Press, 2002
"Narratology, Intro. to the Theory of Narrative 3rd edition", M. Bal, University of Toronto Press, 2009
References
1956 births
Living people
20th-century English women artists
21st-century English women artists
Artists from Brussels
Artists from Kent
British contemporary artists
Light artists
Minimalist artists
People from Folkestone