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Ann Veronica Janssens -
Produced on the occasion of Janssens' first exhibition in the Nordic countries, in Kiasma, this monograph focuses on an essential aspect of her practice: the exploration of luminous matter. It brings together installation views from the last twenty years as well as essays on the artist's examination of visual perception in her work.
Distinctive, precise and systematic, the art of Ann Veronica Janssens is unparalleled in contemporary art history. The Belgian artist represents a post-minimalist generation of artists who employ various media of expression to process their perceptions of the world. Working primarily with light, she has created an interwoven oeuvre of installations comprising elements such as fog, sound and moving images, as well as projections, urban interventions and lyrical sculptural pieces. In the history of Light Art, Janssens falls somewhere between foregoing generations of artists such as James Turrell and Carlos Cruz-Diez and successors such as Olafur Eliasson and Haroon Mirza.
This catalogue was produced by Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, in collaboration with IAC Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes and Le SHED Centre d'art contemporain de Normandie. It comprises photographic documents of Janssens' solo exhibitions held at both institutions in 2017. Each text provides a different perspective on Janssens and her observations on light, perception, synaesthesia and transcendence, offering fresh tools and ideas for renegotiating our own place and perception of the world.
Published on the occasion of the exhibitions “My main material is light” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, from October 12, 2018, to January 13, 2019; “Mars”, Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes, from March 23 to May 7, 2017, and “Naissances latentes”, Le SHED – Centre d'art contemporain de Normandie; L'Aître Saint-Maclou, Rouen; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, from October 16 to November 12, 2017.
Ann Veronica Janssens (born 1956 in Folkestone, UK, lives and works in Brussels) questions the elusive. She tries less to grasp the impalpable and chooses to experiment with its multiple forms and apparitions instead. Janssens work is based on one's sensorial experience, the encounter of the body and the space. She uses light, colour and sound to create experiences that heighten a viewer's perception and awareness of space and movement. The visitor – whom Janssens disorientates by the modification and destruction of the known space – is an integral part of her installations. She engages all senses to render the immaterial visible and tangible.
Preface by Leevi Haapala & Nathalie Ergino, texts by Marja Sakari, Clélia Zernik, Laura Lindstedt.

Graphic design: Timo Vartiainen.

Published with Kiasma, Helsinki.
 
published in November 2018
bilingual edition (English / French)
20 x 27 cm (softcover)
184 pages (color ill.)
 
ISBN : 978-952-7067-74-1
EAN : 9789527067741
 
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