Ann Veronica Janssens: Fog Star

Ann Veronica Janssens’s installation transforms the interior of the Spring House on the Museum’s west lawn, drawing visitors into the neoclassical building with a hazy glow of brilliantly hued light.

Once inside, an artificial haze obscures navigational reference points. On the far wall, beams of light form a seven-pointed star, which morphs between palpable geometry and amorphous atmosphere as visitors move about the space.

Haze is a substance of abiding fascination for Janssens. Her Fog Star series explores the capacity of haze to give sculptural form to light. Focused on fleeting and intimate experiences of the world, the artist draws viewers’ attention to our own processes of perception within a surrounding environment.

Janssens (b. 1956, England) lives and works in Brussels. For more than three decades, she has used light, haze, saturated color, and reflective surfaces to compose environments that dazzle and disorient viewers into experiences of active perceptual engagement. Janssens’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions across Europe. Together with the artist Michel François, she represented Belgium at the 1999 Venice Biennale. Her first solo presentation at a museum in the United States took place in 2016 at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.