Artist: Ann Veronica Janssens

Galleria Alfonso Artiaco presents UP, the sixth solo exhibition by Ann Veronica Janssens.

For over four decades, Janssens (b. 1956, Folkestone, UK; lives and works in Brussels) has explored the shifting boundaries of perception through a practice that is both rigorous and elusive. Her work investigates the interplay between light, matter, and space, engaging these elements not as static forms, but as fluid agents of experience. Through translucent surfaces, reflective planes, and optical phenomena, she constructs environments where reality is not fixed but instead dissolves into an ever-changing, intangible state.

Janssens' works do not merely represent, but come to life through experience: they transform the exhibition space into a site of perpetual redefinition, where the viewer, fully immersed, becomes an essential part of the work itself. The exhibition space becomes a field of perceptual shifts, where the viewer’s presence is essential, their experience shaped by the movement of light and the instability of form. In this realm, vision is no longer a passive act but a dynamic process, constantly reframing what is seen and felt.

UP unfolds through two interconnected series: Blocks and Frissons.

Blocks are solid glass structures that appear to suspend time and space, holding them in a delicate equilibrium between density and transparency. These enigmatic forms hover between object and apparition, their contours dissolve as light filters through them. In this series, Janssens continues her ongoing inquiry into the perceptual properties of matter, replacing industrial materials with elements that engage with light in unpredictable ways. Volume becomes fluid, presence is made porous, and fruition itself manages to simoultaneously transport to a non-space hanging between the tangible and the incorporous.

With the Frissons series, Janssens introduces an added layer of optical complexity. Hammered glass panels, layered with dichroic film, fracture and refract light into shifting, prismatic compositions. Colour is no longer fixed but volatile, dissolving into iridescent veils that transform in response to movement. Space is no longer static but vibrates with ephemeral hues, unsettling the boundaries between presence and absence, between what is seen and what is sensed.

In UP, perception becomes an act of creation. The works are not inert objects but mutable conditions—activated by light, altered by movement, and ultimately completed by the gaze of the viewer. What emerges is not merely a visual encounter, but an immersive, destabilising experience where the visible is in constant negotiation with the invisible.