In times when it feels like life often moves at the pace of spectacle, You Promised Me Poems offers a different rhythm. It calls for patience and attentiveness, encouraging a way of seeing that values subtlety over proclamation. Some works speak loudly, while others whisper. This exhibition is dedicated to the power of the quiet ones.

It does not aim to illustrate poetry nor argue for a single meaning. Instead, it presents a constellation of visual, poem-like works that invite us to look more slowly, more carefully, and to find meaning in what remains unsaid. The pieces span from abstraction to photography, from sculptural forms to assemblages of found objects; different media united by a shared sensibility. While their materials and techniques vary, they all embody a poetic sensibility shaped by melancholy, absence, and restraint.

The artworks speak in muted tones, mostly monochromatic surfaces that set aside the immediacy of colour, drawing us instead to contrast, texture, and structure. The focus is less on decline and more on the resilience of what endures. There are no subjects in photographs, only what remains after life has departed: abandoned places, discarded objects, fragments of use. The sculptures and assemblages, constructed from pieces of once functional materials, perform a similar act: recontextualising what has been broken or discarded, allowing new meanings to emerge through contrasts and unexpected connections. To call these pieces ‘poetic’ is to describe how they touch us; they resonate emotionally, not through spectacle, but through subtle moods that unfold slowly.

Imagery and symbolism suggest more than they reveal, creating atmospheres, sometimes austere, sometimes tender, that transport us elsewhere. Incomplete stories are implied, and rather than resolving the work’s mystery, we are asked to sit with it, letting the questions themselves become meaningful. This exhibition presents a beauty that is understated yet profoundly felt. It suggests how the everyday is transformed into something contemplative and profound. Here, melancholy is not sentimentality but structure: inscribed in weathered surfaces, in forms that resist closure, in images that hold something back. These works remind us that the quietest gestures, like whispers, are often the ones that linger the longest.

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List of participating artists:

Isabelle de Rooij

Marco van Lenten

Marijn de Jong

Misha Stevenson

Kasper Boelens

Vince Blok

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Art direction: 

Vladimir Radujkov

 

 

Counterbodies were made possible by:

Gemeente Rotterdam, Wijkraad Kralingen 

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Huge thank you to our partners:

De Achtertuin 

 

 

Special thanks to:

Melanie Tissen, Leonie Wenting

 

 

Photo credits:

Jan Arsenović

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