Dobra #2: Vergado Desejo at SPACE ZERO

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DATE

23 Jul 2026

AUTHOR

João Pedro Soares

Dobra #2: Vergado Desejo at SPACE ZERO

AUTHOR

João Pedro Soares

The second part of the Dobra exhibition cycle is the result of a co-production between Space Collectors and Appleton, dedicated to contemporary photography and its expanded possibilities, and presents a collaboration between Vítor Serrano and Helena Vieira.

This cycle, created and curated by Rita Baleia, seeks to challenge the traditional two-dimensionality of photography, exploring other possible paths and attempting to make the photographic object behave as relational matter, a dialogical portal between different artistic practices. The cycle also includes conversations and explores multidisciplinary dialogues that oscillate between performance, sound, sculpture, design, and even gastronomy.

With this in mind, Vergado Desejo is an exhibition that starts from this premise and seeks to explore the theme of desire from a hermetic and dreamlike perspective. In a set of black and white photographs by Vítor Serrano, suspended by a stainless steel frame, we observe a series of flowers in different evolutionary stages. Alongside them, scattered throughout the room, are beeswax sculptures by Helena Vieira. There is an extension, or expansion, of the photographic and sculptural matter into the plant universe, prompting the viewer to question the possible relationships that humans can establish with the more-than-human world. As the exhibition leaflet indicates: "In a single organism, the elements necessary for reproduction coexist, although fertilization continues to depend on the encounter with the other." It is precisely in this encounter of "others," between sculpture and photography, that the exhibition is articulated. Desire thus emerges as a biological, ancestral instance: is it the bee that desires the flower, or the flower that desires the bee? Will there be an answer to this? Perhaps not…

Among the textures of the wax sculptures by Helena Vieira, which evoke plant forms: timid vines, yellowish foliage, small bellflowers in bud… Veins and stems of abstract plants rise to the gallery ceiling, seeking the full photosynthesis of a connection with the photographs that flank them. Serrano's flowers, in impressions of a sandy matte, fleeting blurs of petal and shadow, deposit in the texture of the darkened paper some hope in the grain, in this pollen of revealed film, a desire to gain sculptural form, to go beyond suspension, to find the surface, the body, the desired bee. The climax perhaps exists in one sculpture in particular, in which a photograph of a nape encapsulated in wax is inserted, a representation of the contamination of these artists' practices.

It is also worth highlighting the desire to see more works on display, as this ultimately results in a reduced exhibition given the specificities of the gallery, which is spatially limited. In any case, Vergado Desejo fulfills the purpose of a memorable visit, one characterized by both fleetingness and intensity, in a delicate lasciviousness that renews the gaze with unusual proposals, the slipping of the mind that makes us think again about Vieira's sculptures, and return to Serrano's photographs, in a Lacanian objet petit a without rest.

On July 23rd, at 5:30 pm, artists Vítor Serrano and Helena Vieira will meet at SPACE ZERO, accompanied by curator Rita Baleia, for a conversation about the exhibition Vergado Desejo. It will be an informal meeting to better understand the processes, references, and dialogue between the works that shape the second edition of Dobra. The exhibition is on display at the SPACE ZERO gallery until July 29.

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