Händel n° 1

Black and white are highly significant in the work of Norwegian painter Olav Christopher Jenssen, who comes from Sortland, which lies between 68 and 69º N. in a land of snow and ice, a land of summer light and winter dark. His work is tied to his memories of his birthplace, abandoned more than 25 years ago for the metropolitan life of Berlin. If memories of geography and climate are present in a work like Händel, it is not an “abstract landscape painting.” The evocation is more subtle and more indirect: when Jenssen covers up his own paint, layer upon layer, this is not to hide or disguise but rather in order to bring back to the surface, to identify and reanimate, a forgotten memory, giving it form in and through painting.