L'ODRRE N'A PAS D'IPMROTNCAE

Ann Veronica Janssens (Folkestone, United Kingdom, 1956)
Collection: Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville et du Canton de Genève (FMAC and FCAC), Neon Parallax project

Ann Veronica Janssens creates immersive installations, enigmatic environments, sculptures made of air and light. By playing with the boundaries of the visible and the palpable, she explores the limits of perception and offers the viewer destabilizing experiences of vertigo and wonder. For the Neon Parallax project surrounding the Plaine de Plainpalais, the artist drew upon the cognitive processes that govern our relationship with reality, in order to create a work addressed to the mind. L'ODRRE N'A PAS D'IPMROTNCAE makes use of a text – actually a scientific joke – found on a small poster stating that a word remains legible even if its constituent letters are in the wrong order, as long as the first and last letters are in the right place. The phrase, written with light in capital letters, is thus presented as a tautological textual work: the meaning and form of the phrase converge to express the signifier and the signified. The reader’s experience of automatically ordering the letters is as retinal as it is intellectual, as physical as it is mental. And beyond its demonstrative function, the text chosen by the artist opens a broader reflection on the overall meaning of order in our lives and thought.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham

Links:  http://www.ville-ge.ch/culture/neons/
www.p3art.ch