The real picture

He looks like Ethan Hawke, collects fluorescent objects out of interest and is fascinated by many Indian things, including rangoli and political flexes.

In the City as Goethe Institute bangalore resident at 1 Shanthi Road, Jivan Frenster talks to Metrolife about a myriad of things.

“I’m visual to a nerdy extent. For instance, if I buy a toothbrush, it has to be in my favourite colour! I’m also perfectionist about the visual aspect of my work,” begins Jivan.

“Before studying illustration, I did a lot of graffiti but was not painting in the classical sense with acrylic paints and a brush.

But on painting, I found the gestures and movements very interesting.

I’ve been a dancer all my life and the line representing the body and the body being represented itself intrigues me. I was also interested in sexuality, much before my friends were” he shares.

Though he was invited to work on the topic of gender in Bangalore, his open-mindedness drew his interest to other areas as well.

“I was afraid of gender because there has been bad press in Germany about how women are treated in India.

When I was preparing for this trip, I read the worst stuff – rapes, women being burnt alive and how they have to worship their husbands like gods.

I didn’t want to have a harsh critique because that’s somehow obvious somehow. I’m trying to look for smaller impulses that represent this status quo,” explains Jivan, adding that he’s quite a respectful person but likes to negotiate the line between respect and restriction.

The first thing that caught his fancy was the rangoli.

“When I saw rangoli, I wondered what it is, who does it and what does it mean. I feel that it’s the feminine folk art of India! I was showing photographs of some rangoli, I’d made to random people in a market who couldn’t speak English. A woman
gestured to stay there and came back with a pen and paper and showed me how it’s done. Since then, I’ve made hundreds of patterns and am getting good at
working with both hands simulatenously.”

Another ‘strange and beautiful’ sight was flexes with people’s faces on them.

“It’s a gray scale between politicians and people who want to be present in public.

It’s a really naïve way of trying to get famous and it’s mostly not even good photographs. But it’s funny and personal at the same time and feels like an unconscious series of portraits,” says Jivan, who is working on street photography and with actual flexes for his project.

He adds that he has used a rose filter in many of his works in Bangalore.

“How I see this culture and what appears to me is beautiful and full of social values, which isn’t the case in Germany. But I’ve also never seen so much going wrong in a society at the same time. That ambivalence is shown through the filter.”

These works will feature in Jivan’s exhibition titled ‘A two letters poem: O K’, being held at 1 Shanthi Road on May 29.

In the exhibition, one gallery will have a human sculpture while the other will showcase his photographs, flexes, rangoli experiments and 2D and 3D objects that have fascinated him.