Ann Veronica Janssens
Exhibition view showing Untitled (optical glass), 2019-2023 & Medium pink, sea blue, 2005 – 2023

Ann Veronica Janssens
hou hou, 2022
350-440 cm (dimension variable)
7 spotlights, artificial haze
3 ex + 1 A.P.

Ann Veronica Janssens
exhibition view showing Untitled (optical glass), 2019-2023 & part of Medium pink, sea blue, 2005 – 2023

Ann Veronica Janssens
Untitled (optical glass), 2019-2023
H. 25 x W. 30 x D. 101 cm
optical glass
Edition of 3 + 2 A.P.

Ann Veronica Janssens
Medium pink, sea blue, 2005 – 2023
dimensions variable
Size L 2 x 700/1000 watt halogen lamp
dichroic color filter
Edition 1 and 1  A.P.

Medium Pink & Sea Blue, 2005 – 2023 is composed of two halogen lamps with coloured filters that project a myriad of different hues. The filter allows only certain wavelengths of light to pass through it and reflects the spectrum instead of absorbing it. Depending on the angle of incidence, the light passing through the filter reveals a broad spectrum of saturated colours. The angle of incidence is determining: the wider the beam, the more pronounced the variation in colour at the periphery. The light projections, arranged in-situ, are scattered along the walls and ceiling of the room, revealing the combinations of several halos with broad spectrums of saturated colours. “In using light as a medium and the wall as a canvas, Ann Veronica Janssens reinvents the pictorial object, liberating the image from the limits imposed by the frame and freeing the work of art from its material character” (Camila Colombo, Ohme).

The sculpture Untitled (optical glass), 2019-2023 is composed of optical glass, the most perfect kind of glass to be found. Used originally for lens or cockpit windows of airplanes, for example, it has no imperfections of any kind. The heavy transparent bar lies on the floor, its presentation alluding to the non-negotiable effects of gravity. The four sides of the bar are not completely flat; as a consequence, we see light not reflected on the surface of the glass bar but materialized within the glass in unexpected forms.

Hou Hou, 2022 requires visitors to move inside the space to experiment the sculptural event it proposes. The conjunction of the beams of seven projectors arranged in a circle on a wall, whose light is captured in a layer of haze in suspension, creates a seven-pointed light structure that materializes the shape of a star. The density of the haze sculpts and objectifies the light in space, generating an immaterial heptagonal volume which, depending on the viewer’s movements, seems to project forward or disappear. At times, they might feel as though they are entering the shape of the star, and in a second, as they change the position of their body in the space, their experience dissolves. Hou Hou creates a space to be penetrated, it proposes a radical experience of proprioception.