VIDEO:Ann Veronica Janssens-To Walk Into a Painting

Imagine walking into a painting, immersing yourself in one specific colour and almost feeling that colour inside you. This is the idea behind an installation by one of Belgium’s most prominent artists, Ann Veronica Janssens. She here shows Associate Professor in Physics, Troels Petersen, around in the work, which “opens to a kind of infinity.”

“We are inside a sculpture.” The ceiling of the sculpture ‘Blue, Red and Yellow’ (2001) is covered with LED lighting that is filtered by the primary colours, red, blue and yellow. The space is filled with an artificial fog, which – as it crosses the filtered coloured lights – “somehow materializes this light and gives it a colour and a materiality.” Consequently, Janssens argues, the colour almost enters us, as an experience. Moreover, she continues, we lose our sense of space: “It’s as if we pulverized walls and distances increased because we have a sensation of infinity that also implies that we must slow down.” Petersen adds that the experience inside the sculpture shows how dimming your senses in one way open them up in another. Finally, the Janssens and Petersen compare the experience to walking into a painting, as the artist says: “For me, it’s a bit like a zoom inside a painting, inside a spot of colour, inside this colour matter that suddenly expands…”

Ann Veronica Janssens (b. 1956) creates installations, projections, immersive environments, urban interventions, and sculptures that explore the sensory experience of reality. Her work has been shown at the Lyon Biennale, France, the 48th Venice Biennale, Italy, at the Hayward Gallery and Tate Modern in London, UK, the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, USA and at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. She lives and works in Belgium.

Ann Veronica Janssens, To Walk Into a Painting, Interview by Christian Lund, Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard, Edited by Rasmus Quistgaard, Produced by Christian Lund, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020, Supported by Nordea-fonden