Eva Steynen.Deviation(s) gladly presents Alice Janne's first solo exhibition at the gallery.
The emergent practice of Alice Janne (1985) encompasses minimal sculptures, works on paper, and virtual 3D animations. Her work is often described as ‘scientific pop art’ or ‘an archaeology of the present’. At its base are the collecting and archiving of miniscule 'objets-trouvés' and little bits of paper she finds in the street. The found items are categorized in a database according to form, colour, and time, devoid of any possible narrative context. Starting from their pared-down essence in form, Janne enlarges the small objects into sculptures and acrylic on paper. She works in pigmented plaster, concrete and other materials. In the exhibition space, the sculptures and paintings on paper are distributed anew, as colourful installations.
Alice Janne poses the question of our utilitarian approach to everyday objects; the value we attribute to them, and how we neglect and forget about them. These items that were considered to have been forgotten and useless, Janne renders visible in new, poetic constellations. Her works are minimal, monochrome, and are balanced in both playfulness and colour.
In researching various manners of representation, Alice Janne also creates, alongside her installations, virtual realities of the sculptures in 3D animations. She hereby questions both the transformation from two to three dimensions, as well as the significance traditionally attributed to the arts of painting and sculpture. The questioning arises from a desire to allow the boundaries between the various artistic media to fade, and to instate an innovative interest in the contemporary duality between the real and the virtual.
The title 'Motion Collision' refers to the phenomenon of the clash between two black holes and their influence on the time-space dimension. In his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein posited that bottomless black holes swallow up all matter due to their tremendous gravitational force, but could also offer a possible way out, into a parallel universe.
In 2016, scientists succeeded, for the first time, based on gravitational waves, to make concrete measurements of a black hole. Vibrations caused by movements in space were transposed into an audio file. This made it possible for the first time to hear the clash between two enormous black holes. An event that occurred a billion and a half years ago in the present sounds like a vague, short beep. This led Stephen Hawkins to posit that black holes can emit tiny particles, and that the perception of a black hole could well be a hidden portal to a parallel world.
In 'Motion Collision' Alice Janne allows archaeology and fiction to converge. What if the miniscule objects we pass by, were particles from another universe, from another space-time continuum? The tiny objects Janne collects become artefacts from an imaginary world, bearing witness to another realm, be it virtual or real. In ‘Motion Collision’ the visitor wanders along an artistic itinerary, in which the boundaries between the real and the virtual fade, and where reality and imagination subliminally merge.
Alice Janne (°1985, B, lives and works in Brussels) graduated in 2012 from ERG art school (Brussels, BE) and holds a master’s degree in visual arts. In 2012 she received the Audience Award at the “Concours Médiatine Art Libre”. In 2014 she was selected for the “Prix de la Jeune sculpture” of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels. Her work figures in the renowned art collection of Alain Servais. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Belgium and abroad, among others, at Supermarket/Stockholm” Independent Art Fair (SE, 2013), Centrale/lab, Brussels (B, 2016), Urban Art Contest, Brussels (B, 2021), Le Delta, Namur (B, 2022), Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Paris (FR, 2022).