Ann Veronica Janssens

Janssens' work presents decisive visual experiences. Her work is inspired by nature, science, and minimalism.[5] Variations in the atmospheric light in Kinshasa, the city in Congo where she grow up,[6] made a deep impression on her, as did the handling of geometry and light in Mies van der Rohe's work, notably his Barcelona Pavilion. Originally she wanted to be an architect, like her father, but she began to move away from this discipline as it struck her as rather too functional. She explored artistic discoveries that included sculptures of Henry Moore, and was influenced by Maria Wierusz Kowalski (known as Tapta), with whom she had worked as assistant at La Cambre art school in Brussels.[7]

Ann Veronica Janssens, L'odrre n'as pas d'ipmrotncae, 2012. is part of the public art project The Neon Parallax in Geneva

Janssens mainly does site-specific works. She takes a specific space as her starting point and adds forms and volumes to the existing architecture.[8] Often she chooses unexpected, unobvious places like a stairway, a ceiling or a window ledge. Her interventions bring the specific qualities of an environment to light. She sets out signposts intended to let viewers define themselves against reality. In what way does our point of view determine our perception? How does the viewer relate vis-à-vis a specific place? For a public space art project such as The Neon Parallax[9] in Geneva, for example, she used a misspelled text found on the ground as starting point for a large neon installation on the rooftop of a building.

Originally she worked chiefly with industrial materials – concrete, wood and glass – and primary forms. Since 1990 her work increasingly displays a more immaterial character: light, sound and fog instead of rough building materials. These works lead to a drastic total-experience that completely changes the viewer's perception of the space.[8]