Each year, the Danish Museum Louisiana outside Copenhagen incorporates new works of art into its collection with the help of funds and private donors. In the spring exhibition “Hot Pink Turquoise”, the museum is now exhibiting works by Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens for the first time.
The exhibition introduces the work of Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens (b. 1956). 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.
Related: Why is there a Louisiana Museum in Denmark?
Minimalistic but unmistakable
Her works tend towards minimalism, emphasizing the fleeting, ephemeral and fragile nature of the environments she invites us to enter. Janssens’ art eludes categorization, but its effect on the viewer is unmistakable.
The organization of space and the diffusion of light, radiant color, stroboscopic impulses, artificial mists and reflective or translucent surfaces all serve to reveal the instability of our perception of time and space.
Hot Pink Turquoise in Copenhagen
While the artist openly acknowledges her inspiration from the Californian Light and Space artists of the 1960s, for her it has always been about conveying an experience of art by simultaneously stimulating the eyes, body and consciousness, and not about observing art from a distance.
Related: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Properties of materials (gloss, lightness, transparency, fluidity) and physical phenomena (reflection, refraction, perspective, balance, waves) are rigorously examined here for their ability to destabilize the very concept of materiality.
She works like a scientist
“Engaged gestures and the loss of control that are fully assumed and proposed as an active experience: my way of proceeding consists of such loss of control, the absence of overbearing materiality, the attempt to escape from the tyranny of objects,” said Ann Veronica Janssens in an interview in 2004.
Related: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Janssens’ work ranges widely, with no intention of confirming what we already know. In fact, it aims to locate us precisely at the spot where we open ourselves up again. Like a scientist, she pursues and pushes the boundaries of the known – in light effects, mists, color trails, reflective optical illusions – as a ground for engendering thoughts and feelings in the viewer. Very simple at times, her works can demand our participation while enveloping us completely in alienation.
The exhibition at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art runs from 23 January through 17 May.
Hot Pink Turquoise in Copenhagen, compiled by Tor Kjolberg