Olav Christopher Jenssen
The Living Room
02 Sep – 01 Oct 2011
Olav Christopher Jenssen is one of Scandinavia’s most recognized and exhibited contemporary artists. Through his work with surface, colour and structure he investigates, through a variety of media, the premises of painting. Energy and curiosity dominate his expression, which at the same time is characterized by his great visual talent to link stringent shapes with generous brushstrokes and scrapes.
It is exactly this energy and need to investigate, which is evident in his new works at the exhibition The Living Room at Galleri Susanne Ottesen. The exhibition is made up of monotypies which show a wide range of his different expressions and techniques being worked through this particular graphic process. Monotype is a graphic technique where paint is applied directly to a cobber plate which immediately hereafter is printed. The artistic creative process becomes facilitated by the rapid way of working dictated by the particular process connected to the printing. One thing leads to another and gives way to a symbiotic relationship between the artistic process and the finished result. In spite of the cohesive visual subject matter, the series is characterized by a variation and an energy which make the works exude a raw and unfiltered energy and an adrenalin-driven expression.
Olav Christopher Jenssen is currently preparing a large solo-exhibition to be shown at the Berardo Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon in the autumn of 2012. Amongst larger presentations of Jenssen’s work can be mentioned Panorama in 2009 at Brandts, Denmark, Antoss Berlin – Kunst macht Welt in 2006 at Haus am Waldsee, Germany, and Both in 2002-03 at Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art, England. Jenssen is represented in important foreign collections such as Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Norway, KIASMA in Finland, Moderna Museet Stockholm in Sweden, FNAC in France, Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany, and at Museum of Modern Art, New York in USA. In Denmark Jenssen is represented at Horsens Kunstmuseum, Esbjerg Kunstmuseum and Sønderjyllands Kunstmuseum. Olav Christopher Jenssen lives and works in Berlin, Germany.