Cards for Sentiments
6th of September to 11th of October, 2025
Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Amsterdam
Behind me, she hangs
Exhibition text
“...For the exhibition, Noro draws from the personal archive of his grandmother, illustrator Ann-Lise Drescher. Her work, originally created for greeting cards, napkins, and gift wrap, was designed for circulation rather than preservation. In Cards for Sentiments, these motifs return as both material and conceptual backdrop.
The paintings in the exhibition suggest collapsing states—physical, psychological, or structural. Decorative elements appear throughout the works as fragments detached from their original context (summer dress, book cover, gum wrapper, patterned bedsheet, handwritten notes, chipped wallpaper, frayed fabric), debris. Or perhaps they are interiors, spaces that reside within. Noro has created an installation developed over two years, composed of collages, textile works and archival fragments. Through processes of layering and erasure, earlier images are almost entirely obscured, leaving faint traces beneath the surface. Memories, thoughts, efforts, stories, erased. This ongoing transformation emphasizes process over fixed outcome and allows the work to remain in flux, shaped by time, audience, and context—a ghost that settles in the space.
The connections between the works arise from a transformative tension, a dialogue between stillness and what lingers beneath it. They suggest its influence is unfolding slowly, like an undercurrent. The past doesn’t simply sit behind us; it gathers in the present, drawing us inward, even as we move forward, carried by it in ways we might only recognize over time. “