Olav Christopher Jenssen: Another Pale Afternoon / The Post-Rubicon Paintings

“Whoever is familiar with the visual art of Christopher Jenssen knows that—in this case as well, exceptions prove the rule—he has a liking for compressed vertical formats. That causes his pictures to seem compact, sometimes almost “chunky” in their overall appearance—like painterly assertions that cannot easily be shoved aside and ignored. Their consistently space-dominating “steadfastness” thereby conforms to an aesthetic logic that becomes apparent to every viewer at a first encounter. Because the compact formats provide a formal counterpole to quite lively, painterly interior worlds that unfold upon the surface of the canvas. Coming to light here are iridescent movements of color, flowing forms and line patterns which are sometimes almost reminiscent of crocheted curtains and whose various motile energies require a counterpoint that is provided by the aforementioned, fundamentally stable pictorial formats. In this sense, Jenssen’s painting can be defined as picture-art that takes its stand with confidence and as a matter of course against the fashionable paradigm of formal unboundedness. Not expansion but concentration is the working principle of this artist, and in this respect his works resemble pointedly expressed “containers” in which he brings to light quite a number of experiences of form and color—or sensations colorantes, as Cézanne would have put it. A veritable feast for the eyes is offered; nothing is more foreign to Jenssen than the aesthetic anorexia of Conceptualism. Instead his daring showpieces oscillating between dramatic and lyric passages indulge in a maximum of sensuality, even if they are not imbued with anything that is directly carnal—such as is the case, for example, with Lovis Corinth’s lascivious nudes. We accordingly encounter in the exhibition at Galleri Susanne Ottensen unremittingly sumptuous, almost “baroque” pictures in which the processual element has almost completely dissolved the haptic and static aspect of the forms. The eye seldom finds a secure foothold; instead it is summoned to follow the painting’s motile impulses across the entire pictorial surface, all the way to its farthest corners.”

– Af Christoph Schreier