Olav Christopher Jenssen - 2003

Olav Christopher Jenssen (b. 1954), is one of Norway’s most internationally recognised and widely exhibited artists. Jenssen’s work has been the subject of exhibitions in such leading art institutions as the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, the Kunsthalle zu Kiel, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo.

Large presentations of his works were most recently given at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art  (2002-2003) in Newcastle, and the Kunstmuseum, Bonn (2003). Jenssen is also represented in important public collections, such as The Museum of  contemporary Art in Oslo, KIASMA in Helsinki, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, FNAC in France, and Kunstmuseum Bonn. Jenssen has made his mark as an original reinterpreter of abstract painting. His works have exerted an important influence on a younger generation of painters working  within a non-figurative milieu.

In addition to painting, Jenssen also works in drawings, graphics, and sculpture. He has investigated a wide range of artistic expressions, from the small and simple, to the large and complex. His abstracted pictorial language lends itself to large-scale commissions, such as the monumental glass mosaic ”The Path Leading to Nietzsche’s House” in the Telenor headquarters outside Oslo. The works are playful, sensitive, intimate, and poetic. Important in Jenssen’s works is  the interplay between detail and whole, the spontaneous and controlled.

ABG Sundal Collier was proud to sponsor the publication of ”Time Paintings”, a large monograph on the artist published by Hatje Cantz / Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2003, and is grateful to Olav Christopher Jenssen for his collaboration and contribution to this edition of our Annual Report. We hope our readers enjoy the small selection