Ole TERSLøSE JENSEN

"A concise history of aviation" 

Once upon a time, there was a man whom we shall call Ole Tersløse Jensen, who would have liked to be Icarus. But, as we know, the experience of this mythical hero, whose wings were burnt by the sun, was not very conclusive. Dreams, however, are stubborn things. With no other option, the man became an artist, another way of taking off from the plane of reality. Nonetheless, he was definitely not interested in the metaphorical flights of fancy, or in disappearing into the metaphysical abyss proposed by the pioneers of abstraction. Tersløse Jensen had no interest in the floating forms of a Kandinsky or the declarations of a Malévitch who said that he had torn himself away from the terrestrial globe and thence drifted in the whiteness of infinite space in his canvasses.
For the Danish painter, practicality was necessary. His works exhibit a strange tribe, vanished for many years from the surface of the earth and which were called the worshippers of flying insects. An amateur anthropologist himself, Tersløse Jensen rediscovered the trace of these beings who lived on an isolated, inaccessible island in an ancient Danish book of which only one copy remains in the royal library of Copenhagen. Patiently, he reconstructed the images of these machines, prototypes of the ULM. The style is meticulous. With great precision, the crisp contours draw the forms covered over with a grey metallic color. The members of the tribe are still there, naked like sculptures, accomplishing an unchanging ritual, that of accompanying with their gaze or a gesture, the take off or the landing of these mechanical instruments on a background of blue sky.
We will know nothing more about this strange custom which is beyond our understanding. Some say that it is only an ancient Scandinavian legend. Others believe that these are the first representations of extraterrestrial beings which have disappeared since then. Whatever the case, Tersløse Jensen remains tight-lipped and reveals nothing about this mystery. One day, sure enough, he will pass over to the other side of the canvas and will finally achieve his goal. 

Itzhak Goldberg
Art Historian

Translated from French by Jean Davis