a retrospective of belgian artist ann veronica janssens' work unfolds at pirelli hangarbicocca

‘grand bal’ retrospective on show at pirelli hangarbicocca

Milan’s Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca presents ‘Grand Bal’, a retrospective of the work of Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens, one of the world’s foremost artists. Throughout her 40-year career, Janssens has continued experimenting with light, her primary material. In addition, she has explored the sensory and performative nature of space and architecture, creating mutable and ephemeral works that touch the human heart. Emerging from her research, the artist’s interventions are set on the border between art and science. They investigate the limits of human perception and psyche and the aleatory connotations of natural phenomena down to their minimum scale.

‘Grand Bal, running from April 6 to July 30, 2023, is conceived as an extended choreography that situates environmental installations alongside more intimate works, tracing a visual, aural, and tactile path that invites visitors to move between the incorporeal and tangible and between surreal atmospheres and the socio-political and cultural signs of our present time.

Ann Veronica Janssens ‘for PHB’ (2004-23) | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE | all images © Andrea Rossetti

ann veronica janssens: exploring light & space

Since the late 1970s, Ann Veronica Janssens has developed her research around light and its relationship to what surrounds it, often creating site-specific works that challenge the immutable nature of sculpture and installation. Frequently associated with the work of ‘Light & Space’—the 1960s group of American artists that included, among others, Robert Irwin and James Turrell—Janssens has built her practice on overcoming the art object through its dematerialization and deconstruction. Through minimal forms and gestures that have an anti-monumental quality, Janssens is able to change the public’s perception of space.

Ann Veronica Janssens, ‘Grand Bal’ exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

With its use of light, color, mirrors, air, or artificial fog, her art calls for the direct participation of viewers, inviting them to experience reality differently, to develop an awareness of their senses, of the architecture and spatial-temporal categories by which we define it, emphasizing its sociopolitical and cultural aspects. Often based on experiments in collaboration with scientists, the artist’s works become labs for testing the boundaries between properties and physical-material elements regarded as opposites, such as light and darkness, sound and silence, emptiness and presence, and the tangible and the incorporeal.

Ann Veronica Janssens, ‘Grand Bal’ exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

revealing janssens’ multifaceted work

‘Grand Bal’, curated by Roberta Tenconi, explores Ann Veronica Janssens’s career and different aspects of her practice. Presenting the most comprehensive selection of her works to date, it includes historical projects and new productions designed to interact with the space of the Navate within Pirelli HangarBicocca and the outdoor area, expanding its boundaries. To do this, the artist has come up with an unprecedented intervention, ‘waves’ (2023), in which she transforms some of the exit doors into openings: by replacing the doors with a porous, transparent PVC net, she allows natural light, as well as sounds, air and other external elements, to penetrate the exhibition space.

‘The resulting alterations fit dynamically within the exhibition plan, conceived by the artist as a visual and sound choreography that centers not so much on objects as on visitors: they are called upon to move and participate directly, following the train of sensations and perceptions generated while experiencing the works. The title ‘Grand Bal’ (grand ball in French) evokes precisely this performative dimension and the dynamic relationship that is established between works, architecture, and the human body as in a dance, where each and every element is necessary for the other to reveal itself completely,’ writes the foundation. 

‘Pioverà’ choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at ‘Grand Bal’ | Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | courtesy Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Ann Veronica Janssens, Pirelli HangarBicocca | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

This connection is already evident in the opening installation, ‘Drops’ (1999/2023), presented at the entrance to the Navate. Twelve round mirrors, arranged on the floor of the Piazza, reflect drop-like fragments and details of the building’s architectural structure, troubling the visitor’s perception of the site and offering new visual perspectives on the surroundings. The mirror elements react in ever-changing ways to the conditions of the place in which they are displayed, altering them in their turn through the refraction of light.

This work is a new version of ‘Danaé’ (1999), created jointly with Nord project and Co in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, in which mirrors on the ground interacted with and reflected the image of Tintoretto’s (1518-1594) ceiling frescoes, generating multiple connections between space, the works, artists and visitors. Alongside art history, the history of architecture also plays a fundamental role for Ann Veronica Janssens, as can be seen in the video ‘Oscar’ (2009) exhibited at Pirelli HangarBicocca, focusing on architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012), master of Brazilian modernism and radical spokesman for social ideals.

Ann Veronica Janssens, ‘MUHKA, Anvers’ (1997-2023) | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

On that note, many of the artist’s works question the meaning of architecture, redefining the features of buildings and public spaces. For example, in ‘Area’ (1978-2023), a section of the Navate is altered by a sizeable walkable surface composed of bricks, a space within a space that houses other works. With this installation, Janssens questions the canonical definitions of sculpture and architecture, creating what she calls a super space: ‘a spatial extension of an existing architecture… I often experiment with ways of making the perception of matter and architecture fluid, which I see as a kind of obstacle to movement and to sculpture.’ (Janssens, 2004).

Some swings suspended above the bricks make up the work ‘Swings’ (2000-2023). Visitors are invited to use these elements, associated with childhood and play and designed for the outdoors, adding disorientation to the exhibition’s experience. The dissonance between the swings and the enclosed space makes visitors aware of their movement and the air displacement caused by the rocking motion. The seats are also covered with a heat-reactive film that changes hue upon contact with warmth: the presence of the human body temporarily changes the appearance of the work, leaving a fleeting trace of its passage.

Ann Veronica Janssens also explores the dissolution of space itself through sensory and perceptual interventions. For example, ‘L’espace infini’ (1999), a hollow rectangular structure with no corners or edges, confronts visitors with a completely white environment, in which an optical effect prevents the eye from discerning dimensions and borders, causing a sense of vertigo and infinity. Similarly, the installation that closes the exhibition in the Cubo space, ‘MUKHA Anvers’ (1997/2023), also produces similar results. In this case, the artist uses a dense artificial fog and natural light to dissolve and blur the features of the room and the presence of bodies, even as she makes more visible the physical and material qualities of the air in a seemingly empty environment. 

Ann Veronica Janssens, ‘Magic Mirrors’ pink & blue (2013-2023) – detail | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | courtesy the artist and Alfonso Artiaco, Naples | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

This exploration of the tangible and intangible concepts leads the artist to use color, fog, and light predominantly, as is the case in the scale model ‘Rouge 106 -Bleu 132’ (2003-2007). Here the audience finds itself in an iridescent environment and, thanks to the presence of flashing blue and red lights, experiences a new vision of the color white. In ‘Bitter, Salty, Acid and Sweet’ (2019), Janssens again investigates the abstract qualities of color, using two large beams of artificial light, which move through the space out of sync, without ever being able to overlap, in an illusory, immaterial pursuit that creates a sense of tension.

Janssens’ investigation of the sculptural dimension of light and color leads her to experiment with the accidental connotations of natural phenomena down to the microscopic scale. ‘Untitled (Prism)’ (2013), in its apparent simplicity, is formed by a small crystal prism placed on a sheet of glass that captures light, whose colored reflections are manifested within the form. ‘My main material is light. I use it in all shapes, liquid, solid, gaseous… as a reflection… It’s a bit like a kind of evidence of a radiation that occurs, a radiation that…allows me to show the manifestations of reality in a different way […] I work a lot by subtraction. There are quite simple shapes, simple propositions… it’s a kind of I remove, I remove, I decrease, I try to go towards the minimum‘. (Janssens, 2016).

‘Grand Bal’ is complemented by a companion monograph that explores the themes addressed in Ann Veronica Janssens’ work, providing new perspectives on her practice. Designed by Manuela Dechames Otamendi and published by Pirelli HangarBicocca with Marsilio publishers in English and Italian, the catalog includes critical texts and thematic insights that analyze the artist’s body of work from the point of view of different fields, including architecture, philosophy, fiction and art history, as well as a conversation between the artist and the curator of the show, Roberta Tenconi. The invited contributors are Philippe Bertels, Robin Clark, Kersteen Geers and Jelena Pančevac, Stéphane Ibars, Maud Hagelstein, and Ernst van Alphen. The catalog will be available by May 2023.

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents the Public Program devoted to Ann Veronica Janssens’ solo show ‘Grand Bal’, on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of April, with an event featuring a choreography created and danced by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, entitled ‘Pioverà’.

Ann Veronica Janssens, ‘waves’ (2023) | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | commissioned and produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

Ann Veronica Janssens, ‘Drops’,(2023) | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

1/6

Ann Veronica Janssens, 'Grand Bal' exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

Ann Veronica Janssens, 'Pink Coco Lopez' (2010) - detail | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

'Pioverà' choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at 'Grand Bal' | Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | courtesy Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Ann Veronica Janssens, Pirelli HangarBicocca | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

Ann Veronica Janssens. 'Golden Section' (2009) | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | in collaboration with Michel François | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

Ann Veronica Janssens, 'La pluie météorique' (1997) - detail | installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | Collection M HKA / Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

Ann Veronica Janssens, 'Grand Bal' exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2023 | © 2023 Ann Veronica Janssens / SIAE

project info:

name: Grand Bal

location: Milan, Italy 

gallery: Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca | @pirelli_hangarbicocca

artist: Ann Veronica Janssens 

curator: Roberta Tenconi 

photography: Andrea Rossetti 

running dates: April 6 – July 30, 2023