Yesterdays, Tomorrow's Todays

Jan Rothuizen (Amsterdam 1968) views the image of the 'self' in a
light-hearted, common and poetic way, sometimes compassionately, sometimes
with sadness and earnest. He not only seems to be looking for his own
possible selfs but at the same time shows the way we construct our self
image and the stories of others.For Missing Signs the artist collected messages that were placed on trees
and walls by people who were seeking help in finding their missing loved
ones. A sheet of paper shows the picture of a girl along with her details:
the colour of her hair, her length, the clothes she was wearing on the day
she disappeared, and her name. Through the association of these facts with
details from other stories, both fictive and non-fictive, the viewer is
able to compose a dramatic image, and we can see how this girl got lost in
the woods and how she disappeared into the night.
Rothuizen's cross-word puzzle is less dramatic, yet similarly intimate in
the questions it poses to those who attempt to solve it. Finding the
solution becomes extra hard when the questions you are confronted with are
personal ones like "why do you try to please people you dislike?" and "who
would you like to be?".
In the Stedelijk Museum, the exhibition Life in a Glass House (until 31
December) holds two of Rothuizen's works. For Somewhere over the Rainbow he
collected press-cuttings and pictures from books and magazines; images in
which he recognised something of himself. The cuttings are not only
components of Rothuizen's work, but they also show pieces of his own
self-image. In De Dag die was zoals je had gedacht/ The Day that was like
you expected, also at the Stedelijk Museum, Rothuizen presents the portrait
of an old man who, some 30 years ago, had a 3-piece white suit made to
match an idealised image from a Playboy advertisement.

At Ellen de Bruijne Projects Jan Rothuizen presents new work in the form of
slide-shows. Again the emphasis is on the way people construct images for
themselves, yet now we are looking back from the future.