Big Expectations Painting

Jan Bolender first saw the light of day, nearly unnoticed, in the shadow of a short-time pope, that just had passed away. More precisely: the neon light of a hospital in Mainz, Germany. After two decades of walking attempts with painting, he again wasn’t noticed while taking film courses at the nearby media-institute instead studying graphic design – and doing his diploma with a 16mm-camera instead of pencil and paper. Of the following financial disaster he fled towards east and took part in tearing down the Berlin Wall several times as an assistant director. An encounter with begging punks at Ostkreuz surprisingly opened his way to Hamburg Media School, where he was still able to camouflage his true vacation by finishing several shorts in an absurd short time. After a debut feature, that was razor-sharply tailored to the night program of ZDF, followed by a anticipatory theatre piece about the future look-back of his failed artist-alter-ego, he decided to try something completely new: honest work. For two years he tackled exposed concrete with hammer, chisel and Flex, before using brushes and many more than 50 shades of grey to bring it into kind of a prenatal state. His first radio play “The concrete-whisperer” won the audience award at the Berliner Hörspielfestival and was aired in German and Swiss radio. Jan lives and works in Berlin and Portugal.