Monolith, 2026
Editors & compilation: Renée Albada Jelgersma, Robert Zandvliet
Publisher: Jap Sam Books
Texts: Jan Bor, Esther Darley, Elaine Equi (poem), Andreas Fiedler, Gudrun Knaus, Robert Zandvliet
Translation: Fiona Elliott, Beth O’ Brien, Marie Louise Schoondergang
Design: Mainstudio / Edwin van Gelder
Image editing: Andreas Fiedler, Edwin van Gelder, Robert Zandvliet
Printing & binding: Wilco Art Books
Language: English
Pages: 424
22.5 x 27.5 cm
Binding: Hardcover with colour on 3 edges
ISBN 978-94-93329-73-7
Release date: March 2026
Made possible with the support of the Jaap Harten Fonds, Museum Franz Gertsch, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, GRIMM, Peter Blum Gallery, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Lakeside Collection, Kulturfonds, Frankfurt RheinMain, Merck'sche Gesellschaft für Kunst & Wissenschaft E.V., NL Niederlande, Mondriaan Fund
This publication is released in conjunction with the exhibitions The Painting is a Door, Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf (March 21 - August 30 2026) and Paradaidha, Kunsthalle Darmstadt (March 29 - August 30 2026)
A monolith is defined as a single, large, unified structure. An apt name for the first complete monograph on the work of Dutch painter Robert Zandvliet (b. 1970). This monumental volume reveals the ongoing tension between experimentation and striking consistency in his body of work.
Spanning more than thirty years (1994–2025), MONOLITH brings together Zandvliet's work from from early explorations to the mature, series-based thinking that defines his practice today. At the centre of the book, curator and art critic Andreas Fiedler constructs a visual essay that draws freely across periods and motifs. It functions as an ‘exhibition on paper’ and offers a new, non-linear reading of his oeuvre. Art historian Esther Darley introduces each major series (2008–2025), clarifying the questions, methods, and pictorial strategies behind Zandvliet’s sustained investigations into landscape, colour, art history, gesture, and all-over structure. Philosopher Jan Bor contributes a reflective essay on perception and painting, written in dialogue with works from different decades, while art historian Gudrun Knaus provides an intimate account of Zandvliet’s monotype residency at Niels Borch Jensen in Copenhagen.
In a final monologue, Robert Zandvliet traces how his most recent series Paradaidha absorbs and transforms everything that came before—where motifs once isolated now converge into a single, layered field. Designed by Mainstudio as a tactile, sculptural object, MONOLITH is not simply a survey, but an autonomous work in itself: a book that invites repeated opening, close looking, and discovery.
55,00 €
