ART CITIES:London-Ann Veronica Janssens
Ann Veronica Janssens has created an extensive body of work over four decades spanning installations, projections, immersive environments and sculptures. At the core of her practice is an interest in light and its impact on our perception and experience. Her works range wide, but they can all be described as sculptures that use the space as a stage for sensory activity.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: South London Gallery Archive
The exhibition “Hot Pink Turquoise” in South London Gallery. During the darkest months of the year the public will have access to works in which the light is the bearing element. Her work is both fragile and dizzying art – fragile because the works and their components are very simple while their effect elevates them above the material. Janssens herself often uses the word ‘fluid’ to describe the effect of her works – even for example when they consist of a 6.5 metre long iron girder polished at the top so the room is reflected and it is hard to fix your gaze on the object. Janssens seeks no control of either works or viewers. Many of the works in the exhibition can evoke the sensation of standing at the threshold of something. They stress transitions and transformations between on the one hand a material level, evoked by glass, color, liquids and not least light, and on the other hand a dynamic experience of time and space. This may sound abstract, but the exhibition is in many ways one long but concrete and bodily experience of how, by looking more closely at something, walking around and into a familiar material world, we activate a curiosity and an attention to ourselves – a potential we can even take with us when leaving the exhibition. Mist suffused with color Time, space and light as coloured substance are quite concrete in one of Janssens’ major works, the large installation “Blue, Red and Yellow” (2001). As if entering a hothouse you walk into a faint drifting mist suffused with three colors, and body and brain in combination, while challenged, enable us to experience things very intensely. Conversely, with her shiny, reflecting bicycles elsewhere in the exhibition, Janssens gives us the opportunity to reach out for the familiar and experience body and museum in an unusual and dynamic combination. Both works bear within them an emancipation. Janssens has no decided agendas – neither climate, gender nor cultural crisis. Janssens’ “Untitled (Blue Glitter)” an expanse of reflective, blue glitter scattered across the floor of the gallery, occupies the Main Space for the first half of the show, after which it will be replaced by Janssens’ reflective wheeled Bikes (2001). Visitors are invited to cycle round the Main Gallery on one of five custom-made bicycles with mirrored wheels, which will reflect light on the surrounding gallery walls and floor as the wheels turn.
Info: Curator: Anders Kold, South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Rd, London, London & South London Gallery Fire Station, 82 Peckham Road, London, Duration: 23/9-29/11/20, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.southlondongallery.org
