Ann Veronica Janssens

Five Easy Pieces
By Joel Benzakin

Installations, films, sculptures, environments: these are some of the means by which Ann Veronica Janssens enhances our proximity to such “simple” notions as colour, light, sound and space; simple notions that are nonetheless difficult to materialise. Through inducing sensations and intensities, her works are attempts at apprehending the ethers, the air and all manner of suspensions. This work concerns the suspension of sensitive states, or of that which is ungraspable, in order to propose it to us in the space of a moment, a dash of light or in the presence of a smokescreen.

Janssens’ works open up the passages that are necessary to this alchemy of matter and gazes. They invite us to step over these thresholds or hold us there on the brink, suspended, so that this transformation may take place, evoking the illusion of infinite space. Coloured fields of energy may materialise, the light can absorb us, or a star may appear before our eyes. The works sometimes engender a slight displacement or, more frequently, a perceptual shift that has no existence outside of the duration of the required, active presence of the viewer. Five Easy Pieces is the title of an American film from 1970 and one of the key films from Hollywood’s 1970s New Wave, but it’s also a piano learning method published during those years. In the same way, the five sculptures presented by Ann Veronica Janssens in this exhibition invite us to discover different aspects of her works.

A magic mirror with a deliberately shattered surface multiplies the fractured likeness of the viewers and the space, into which it also projects its sparkles. This refraction of the environment and the experimental activation of colour linked to the displacement of viewpoints enable a virtual “portal” to open up beyond the perception of the object, producing a temporal effraction that transports us, for a moment, into a magical universe.

On the ground lies a long beam of solid glass. It’s entirely black. The fragile quality of the glass, combined with the solidity of the bar and the dense black, lends this work an otherworldly presence. The black glass absorbs light, yet it seems to radiate from within. One might even imagine it to be the solidification of liquid oil that will begin to flow again when it is touched.

On the walls, three simple geometric shapes punctuate the space; three golden surfaces capture the light and the enigmatic contours of the faces that find themselves reflected in its glow. Gold is nature’s ultimate brilliance and its use in art entails a long historical tradition. Not only was it used to express economic value, it also referred to unfathomable space. These three surfaces vibrate with such subtlety that they offer us the physical experience of a possible transcendence.