These sculptures hide secrets

Posted by Robin on 10 March 2018 4 Comments

Sissel Tolaas’s work is more subtle but it’s one of the most innovative – and surprising – pieces in the whole show. It’s a series of small, white, abstract sculptures equally spaced across four walls. These sculptures hide secrets. Each is imbued with scent, which triggers a memory or a feeling or, sometimes, an acute physical reaction.

— Scent artist Sissel Tolaas collected smells from Melbourne, and is now exhibiting them at the NGV Triennial, which runs until April 15 at the National Gallery of Victoria. Read more at Smelling Art with Sissel Tolaas at Broadsheet Melbourne, or find out more about the Triennial here.

Feel the sourness

Posted by Robin on 22 November 2017 Leave a Comment

It’s not the cozy scent of a soul-warming hearth, Mr. Kurkdjian said, but a cold, marble fireplace after the flame has been extinguished. The soot and ash left behind is meant to help the audience “feel the sourness” of a conversation between a son and his father, whose sins this son disclosed to the entire family.

— Perfumer Francis Kurkdjian scents a movie. Read more at What’s That Smell? It’s ‘Festen,’ a Play and Film With Aroma at the New York Times.

Unidentified Scented Object

Posted by Robin on 20 October 2017 2 Comments

The vision of Cartier’s in-house fragrance nose Mathilde Laurent, Le Nuage Parfumé - aka the Unidentified Scented Object - is located at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The scented object is in fact a cloud, a puff of perfume if you will. Inside a glass cube sits a suspended spiral staircase with a floating cloud that hovers elegantly just below the ceiling. It looks abstract on first impression, almost an illusion until closer inspection when the texture of the cloud is clear to see.

— Read more about Cartier's new art installation in Paris at What Is Cartier's Le Nuage Perfume Experience All About? at Vogue UK. The scent in the "cloud", by the way, is L'Envol de Cartier, and Le Nuage Parfumé is open to visitors from today through Monday.

Asian American women & carpenter ants

Posted by Robin on 16 May 2017 4 Comments

When visitors enter the exhibition, canisters spritz scents derived from body odor originating from Asian American women and carpenter ants in a work titled “Immigrant Caucus.” To create the fragrance, Yi sampled the women’s sweat and worked with forensic chemist Kenneth Furton to identify the chemical constituents of the human body odors. [...]
With a list of the women’s sweaty top notes in hand, Yi then worked with a Parisian perfumer to recreate a synthetic interpretation of the armpit aroma and spiked the concoction with smelly chemicals emitted by carpenter ants.

— Anicka Yi’s exhibition “Life Is Cheap” is open at the Guggenheim through July 5. Read more at Olfactory science meets contemporary art, plus ants at Chemical & Engineering News, or see Please Smell the Art: Anicka Yi Will See That You Do at The New York Times, or Artist Anicka Yi’s Scents and Sensibilities at Vogue.

Bottle of liquid doom

Posted by Robin on 18 April 2016 8 Comments

To create this fatalistic fragrance, the pair went through the Book of Revelation, plucking out every mention of a scented element: thunder, blood, rocks of the mountains, incense, wormwood, rod of iron, creatures of the sea, hail and fire, animal horns, flesh burned with fire, brimstone and, of course, a grievous sore. They then passed this somewhat unlikely shopping list on to Edinburgh-based perfumer Euan McCall to turn the 1611 King James Bible’s vision of annihilation into a “wearable scent”. That’s right, a limited-edition bottle of liquid doom can be yours for just £300 plus VAT.

— You can smell Apocalypse, a fragrance by artists Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead, at the exhibit Party Booby Trap at Carroll/Fletcher in London through 25 May. Read more at I sniffed the end of the world, and it smells like bile and dread at The Guardian.

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

These sculptures hide secrets

Feel the sourness

Unidentified Scented Object

Asian American women & carpenter ants

Bottle of liquid doom