Ann Veronica Janssens “UP” at Alfonso Artiaco, Naples

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, shaped by the movement of light and the instability of form.

In “UP” new works based on the overlapping of glass blocks: the structures on the floor appear suspending 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.

Floating on the walls a frisson blue and a structural color sculpture. The former belongs to the hammered glass panels series, layered with dichroic film, fracture and refract light into shifting, prismatic compositions. Color is no longer fixed but volatile, dissolving into iridescent veils that transform in response to movement.

The latter recreates the natural phenomenon of structural coloring. This event is produced by the refraction of light between specific microstructures that contain melanin pigments. These absorb part of the light waves and generate characteristic iridescent tones like those found in peacock feathers, for example, or in the wings of a butterfly.

at Alfonso Artiaco, Naples
until June 7, 2025