1301PE is pleased to announce its fourth solo exhibition with renowned Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens. For more than thirty years Janssens’s work has been widely recognized for her ability to challenge, interrogate and disjoint perception.
“There’s no secret, I’m in the world’s mysteries.” –Ann Veronica Janssens
Janssens presents Leisure and Survival. The aluminum letters are carefully placed throughout the gallery to spell out Leisure and Survival, implying a contradiction between the
two and that one’s existence is not without the other. The juxtaposition of Leisure and Survival can be seen everywhere, from yachts gallivanting through the Mediterranean next to migrants swimming for their safety.
Janssens presents a selection of new glasswork—a material Janssens has vigorously investigated for its multitudinous optical and physical qualities. “Observing the world, and in the process of not quite recognizing it,” as Anders Kold writes “is a key aspect of Ann Veronica Janssen’s art – a premise of the artist’s practice and methodology, and a condition...for experiencing her work.” Frisson Rose, for example, reorders our experience of it, taking itself outside of its objecthood and foregrounding our experience. Frisson, the French word for thrill or excitement, can also refer to the bumps on our skin as we experience intense emotion. Here the glass, which literally mirrors us, disguises its materiality by mimicking ours.
Janssens is also exhibiting a new work of Glitters. It engages us spatially and plays with its many dichotomies. The space is then occupied by the work and the viewer, our knowledge of glitter’s near formlessness contrasts with our ability to move within the exhibition space and even the presumption of preservation is set against ephemerality with the work being swept up and repackaged after the exhibition closes resolving the contradictions it once contained.
Born in Folkestone, England in 1956, Janssens lives and works in Brussels. In 1999 Janssens represented Belgium at the 48th Venice Biennale. Janssens’s work has been the subject of major solo and group exhibitions around the world. Recent exhibitions include: Collection Lambert in Avignon, France (2022); The Pantheon in Paris, France (2021); South London Gallery in the United Kingdom (2020); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk , Denmark (2020). Janssens has significant forthcoming exhibitions at the Fondazione Pirelli Hangar in Milan, Italy (2023) and M WOODS Museum in Beijing, China (2023). A selection of solo exhibitions include: FRAC Corse, Bonifacio, France; Serendipity, WIELS - Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium; Are you experienced?, Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló, Castelló, Spain; ARTSPACE, Auckland, New Zealand; Neue National Galerie, Berlin, Germany. Janssens’s work is held in major public and private collections worldwide.
For more information please contact Tate Smith or Quaja Butler at 323-938-5822.
