This exhibition brings together for the first time the work of two internationally acclaimed artists, Ann Veronica Janssens (Belgium) and Diana Thater (U.S.), who utilize colored light, in the form of luminous projections and video installations, as their art's medium. The premise for this exhibition is to present work that uses color to dissolve form and liberate space. The fascination of color is its intrinsic phenomenal complexity that defies linguistic description, and its intense engagement of feeling and sensitivity to context.
In the work of Ann Veronica Janssens and Diana Thater, colored light is projected onto the walls of the gallery whereby the architectural space becomes the arena for an experience that melds physical and immaterial/mental coordinates. The projections declare their materiality by exposing the apparatus while presenting a form that verges on formlessness. What their work has in common is an immersion in the present and the displacement of cognition by experience.
Ann Veronica Janssens, who lives and works in Brussels, represented Belgium in 1999 at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bern, the Neue National Galerie in Berlin, IKON Gallery in Birmingham (UK), among others. Her work was included in the recent exhibition Ecstasy: In and About Altered States at LA MoCA.
Diana Thater began exhibiting in 1990 and has made some of the most important innovations in video installations since its recognition as an art form. She lives and works in LA and has had solo exhibitions at the DIA Center for the Arts, The Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, The Vienna Secession, the Basel Kunsthalle, The Renaissance Society, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture (LA), among many others. She is currently a professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.
