Last April 30, Galeria Nuno Centeno premiered the exhibition This side of Nowhere by the Porto artist Carolina Pimenta. In the exhibition text, Bernardo José de Souza describes the photographic work as an atmospheric creation that “stimulates visual narratives built through the most basic affective technology of our species, touch, a sense that overrides the others to give the skin total sovereignty over desire”.

In This side of Nowhere, Carolina Pimenta presents us with photography’s sensorial potential. In a set of images, the artist reminds us of photography’s ability to awaken an emotional reflection of the subconscious. Through memories of past sensations, putting aside systems of temporal and spatial narrative organization, the opening work has a pure appreciation that moves away from the rationalization of the work towards its incorporation, like a Proustian memory.

One of the exhibition’s first moments is the confrontation with a fabric barrier, a torn image that welcomes the public as an initiation, a border with the works’ appreciation space. This image, made in collaboration with the designer Constança Entrudo, represents a literal barrier between the exhibition space and that which is not. In a second moment, in a dark room, this separation is repeated, not in an imagistic or poetic format of physically crossing the work, but no less clearly. The opening to the work is initiated in this separation, in a surrender to the artist’s atmosphere.

“Vast images of fields and flowers ‘painted’ photographically by Carolina open windows onto the outside landscape” writes Bernardo José de Souza. He recognises the work to the essence of the sensation experienced in the artist’s chosen landscapes. The flowers are not unfamiliar. On the contrary, they are more recognizable than if we were in their presence – the artist’s work shows the essence of the sensations brought about by the “fields and flowers”. In On Photography, Susan Sontag writes “Finally, the most grandiose result of photography is to give us the feeling that we can hold the whole world in our heads – like an anthology of images”. The ability to appreciate photography also lies in associating memories – images, smells, textures, or emotions. Can a flower field remind you of the sun’s warmth and the coolness of the grass on bare feet during a summer afternoon? And an image of two embraced hands, what might it remind you of? The artist presents cross-cutting and suggestive images to be experienced by the public without narrative overtones, leaving space for the other.

Carolina Pimenta’s exhibition is at Galeria Nuno Centeno until May 28.