Rhizomebook.com | Jan van der Til ​| Concepts of work | Curriculum vitae | Support Mondriaan Fund
This page brings together a series of curricula vitae composed over time for exhibitions, grant applications, and various projects. Each curriculum vitae represents a snapshot—not a linear overview, but a situational arrangement of information shaped by context and necessity.
In Jan van der Til's view, the curriculum vitae is more than an administrative document. It expresses consequentia—a coherence that does not arise from chronology but from internal logic. Just as each Book in his work functions as a node within a larger network, these documents are part of a branching structure where form, content, and time resonate with one another.
The collection reveals that identity, within this practice, is not fixed but continually re-situated.
Reality is often presented as flawless and unified, yet this view obscures more than it reveals.
My work manifests in multiple forms, remains hybrid, questions life, and unfolds like a rhizome.
Images, texts, and objects appear as open-ended collages—authorship is secondary.
What I do resists labels. It explores context, meaning, and the fragility of originality.
Boundaries between source and interpretation gradually blur.
We tend to fill in the gaps, even where silence might suffice.
What happens when we reconsider what we thought we saw?
My book remains unfinished; this is its strength.
I question uniqueness, not to dismiss it, but to loosen its hold.
My work deals with the visible, the overlooked, and what is imagined in absence.
What occurs when experience slows or ceases altogether?
The image points, but it is not the thing.
Perception is a form of translation.
A book can hold and quiet what might otherwise scatter.
Can an image dissolve from too much distance?
Every act of seeing passes through layers of interpretation.
Words respond to other words.
My work increasingly leans toward evocation rather than depiction.
Is there ever only now?
Each image alters what came before and what follows.
Presence is plural, layered, and simultaneous.
Can a book unfold itself while being observed?
I can only view the world through the aperture of my own being.
Each image is an opening, never a conclusion.
Not all things can or should be explained.
Pleasant images often conceal their own emptiness.
Language interrupts.
Wandering feels like purpose.
My process is slow, allowing ideas to surface quietly.
Distraction sometimes leads somewhere worthwhile, sometimes not.
Looking can consume what it tries to understand.
A sequence invites dialogue, forming something new between viewer and object.
Nothing is ordinary. Everything deserves reconsideration.
What we experience depends on how we attend.
Language references itself; perhaps images do too.
Perception is never direct.
No single image is central—meaning arises from relation.
The shape of the book reflects a motion, not a destination.
Interpretation makes the unfamiliar just familiar enough.
Everything we notice is already a step removed.
Sometimes the self stands in the way of seeing.
Meaning is what arises in motion, never still.
Translation and time are not tools but starting points.
My work resists polish and finality.
Attention is finite; this limitation defines how we see.
Memory is structured like language.
A little can say a great deal.
Too often, image becomes explanation.
Does blank space invite annotation?
What do we call "real"?
To add is to risk drowning the essential.
No one writes in the margins anymore.
Every image is shaped, never found.
The echo often stays longer than the sound.
I don't make images—I make space for them.
The image takes more than it gives.
There is more than comfort and spectacle.
If there is a theme, it should barely be felt.
I want to prolong looking, not conclude it.
The subject lies not in what is shown, but in the pause between.
Experience is also translation.
If experience becomes addiction, beauty vanishes.
My work should hover—just enough.
From simplicity comes a shifting complexity.
The book's clarity lies in what is withheld.
Material choices come from careful listening.
Stillness invites us in, but we cannot stay.
Truth doesn't sit still.
Stillness is hard to hold, harder to leave be.
The work should stay near the world, not escape it.
Words rarely align with experience.
Choosing matters more than showing.
Many things seek to impress. Few need to.
My views are shifting, not fixed.
I don't aim to please, though it might happen.
Text echoes text—each one a shadow of the last.
The work exists most clearly when set aside.
Looking should remain porous.
Nothing I make is discovery; only a response to what's already present.
The image's importance lies in how it addresses attention.
Translation demands compromise.
A story is not required.
Too much order obscures the view.
Time makes perception possible.
This is not a collection, but a condition.
Certainty always invites doubt.
There is a gap between action and thought.
Reaction comes after translation.
Each addition risks being one too many.
The book must be felt, not explained.
If the work leaves you unmoved, ask why.
I want to remove the structure that overstates itself.
I accept what my ambition brings.
Stillness is not absence but a slow turning.
Time and translation are mirrors.
What we see is largely remembered.
Is there a boundary between interpreting and associating?
Images reflect the meanings we project.
Smallness holds more than it seems.
When expectation fails, vision collapses.
The power is not in what is seen, but in what seeing does.
Meaning never settles.
Existence lies in the unspoken.
The image is a mirror.
To be absent is also a kind of presence.
Our senses are shaped.
Let the image breathe.
I take no joy in capturing.
The personal rarely becomes universal.
Some days pass without trace.
Haste steals depth.
Facts are rarely what they seem.
Each step leads to the next.
There is a delay between sight and sense.
What's commonly believed interests me less.
If I give space, I trust it matters.
Excess hides the essential.
Language and image rarely meet on equal terms.
A book is a quiet unfolding.
I aim to make books that are images in themselves.
How to leave space for interpretation?
What I mean by "image" shifts constantly.
To remove is an act of care.
What we call seeing may not be seeing at all.
Where does the book sit, among others?
Perception without object.
Images do not record.
The relationship with the image is fraught.
Time, not light, reveals.
Most additions add nothing.
Tension arises where stillness holds.
Each word reconsiders the last.
Images are chosen for their relation, not alone.
The work reflects back our own projections.
If reaction slows, something new emerges.
This is a dissection, not a solution.
Each element must earn its place—or step aside.
We've agreed to call this "reality." That's all.
Where does experience end and perception begin?
Sometimes it's hard to know where form and meaning separate.
What happens to memory once remembered?
Books must do more than speak about their parts.
Impressiveness often dulls the senses.
Is seeing the same as noticing?
Are any images truly self-contained?
Meaning rides on what follows.
This is not my life's purpose, and it need not be.
More and more, I make images that ask rather than answer.
What does the frame restrict?
To seek essence is to chase a shadow.
Without time, nothing moves.
A book without anchors.
Is there a shared visual memory?
There are passages that should remain blank.
Light distorts perception.
Form follows attention.
I gather fragments.
What do words do when they try to explain seeing?
Each image reshapes the next.
I tire of images that shout.
What remains, stripped bare?
My work is becoming a question without answer. That may be enough.
A book can reveal itself by what it lacks.
Even the simplest question has no final answer.
I look for stillness—often mistaken for absence.
The image is not in the image.
To show something without showing it—that is the task.
I avoid embellishment.
It's hard to reduce a series to a single form.
I want to express what must be surrendered.
Structure, image, and space form a sentence.
Subtraction is creation.
The image has no edge, no center.
Beauty lies in focused attention, not design.
Perhaps meaninglessness is what we resist most.
An image is a frame around a question.
I seek stillness.
Pages loosen what they once held.
Everything must belong—or be questioned.
Written and spoken are not the same.
Do images need protecting?
Good or bad—are these terms for translations?
Seeing is touching.
What lasts is the nearly still.
I do not wish to package.
To describe is to reduce.
Experience is motion, reaction, interpretation—each translating the other.
Spoken without being said.
Words break from what they name.
Simplicity can include everything—quietly.
Translation allows us to exist.
I cannot face two directions at once.
What happens when a book joins a shelf?
We should always reconsider.
What already exists is more than enough.