Let’s consider the exhibition venue, wide, raw, bare. We are welcomed by a “humanoid presence”, Ariane, who tells us The Fauna of Mirrors, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. This welcoming gesture marks the entrance to the exhibition and the dimension of Whispering Mirrors.

There is an almost instinctive suspicion in communicating with a figure that looks like a human without being one, a kind of call for survival that, together with curiosity, stirs a mesmerising experience. We see and hear Ariane, we recognise Ariane, we fear Ariane.

It is dark, the spotlights on the works guide the movement of those who enter the space. Sculptural pieces, transparent materials, light and darkness – the works are reflected on the walls and floor like shadows of light. In another section, plinths with the perimeter drawn from mirrored surfaces seem to come from another dimension, resting on themselves. “We may argue that digitisation turns the visual arts into performing arts”, claims Boris Groys in In the Flow. This is a possibility that follows us throughout the exhibition. The pieces communicate like a digital forest. Each one emanates an attractive force on the others and the audience, simultaneously static and in motion, motion that only exists because there is an audience.

“The exhibition space is presented here as a kind of space-time capsule, where dynamics contingent to the processes of construction and inhabitation of the world are explored”, says David Revés. A sensorial exhibition that thinks the image and communicates it in its own realm, of awareness and access to the senses. There is a collaborative dynamic between curator and artist, a perspective on the curator’s intervening role that steps into the field of translation, one that does not impose or refrain itself, one that does not deny its existence. Moving away from objectivity and distance, the exhibition grows as a living project of dialogue between artist and curator.

Whispering Mirrors, an exhibition by Rodrigo Gomes curated by David Revés, is on view at Carpintarias de São Lázaro until September 26.