First-hand Exploration Imagery

Olav Christopher Jenssen: The Expedition
Galleri Susanne Ottesen
June 2 – August 19, 2017

Summers are for new explorations. New footprints. New expeditions. Step into Galleri Susanne Ottesen and follow in the footsteps of Norwegian artist Olav Christopher Jenssen (b. 1954), who takes on the role as a curious explorer venturing into exotic areas in the exhibition “The Expedition”.

In a new series of paintings and a parallel series of works made during a residency at Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway, in March and April 2016, Olav Christopher Jenssen embodies a visual documentation of travels into the unknown. The works are all directly inspired by Jenssen’s experiences and impressions in the Arctic and are presented next to the expedition crates in which they were shipped to and from Svalbard, which emphasizes the idea of the painter as a kind of explorer of unknown territory, bringing back an archive of “observations” and “samples.”

In addition to the expedition project Jenssen is showing a series of paintings, L11 from 1998, and a series of ceramic sculptures, The Libertines from 2014.

Biography Olav Christopher Jenssen
Olav Christopher Jenssen was born in 1954 in Sortland in Vesterålen, Norway and lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Lya, Sweden. He studied at the Arts and Crafts School in Oslo (1976-79) and at the Art Academy in Oslo, Norway (1980-81). Solo exhibitions include Saarlandmuseum, Moderne Galerie, Saarbrücken, Germany (2014), Marta Herford, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (2012), KIASMA, Helsinki (2010), Brandts, Odense (2009) and Kunstmuseum Bonn (2003). He participated at the Ostsee Biennale, Rostock (1996) and at documenta 9 (1992). He has been Professor at Professor at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg (1996-2006) and Professor at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Braunschweig (2007-present).

About Susanne Ottesen
Galleri Susanne Ottesen was founded in 1983 by Susanne Ottesen. It was one of a small number of pioneering galleries in Denmark to champion a generation of local and international artists who were transforming the way art was thought, made and presented. Over the past thirty years Galleri Susanne Ottesen has built on this foundation, identifying and supporting succeeding generations of artists, each with a radical and distinctive approach to the possibilites of art.

Source: Susanne Ottesen