18Libro_Sinestesia_completo-final

Living from the Essence
It may be that the above title can be read as suggesting that we are talking here
about seeing life in terms of spirituality, but that is not the case; my aim here is
to show how someone with a special sensitivity can understand the world around
them, in its innermost reality, by way of a sense. Let me explain.
Allow me to introduce a gentleman from Barcelona, ​a perfumer by profession,
an art lover and a collector. He is also a creative artist in two very different
realms: perfume and the visual arts. In the latter he goes under the pseudonym
Nasevo (nas, which is 'nose' in Catalan, followed by the initials of his name,
Ernesto Ventós Omedes), he gives his tireless imagination free rein to interpret
the world through his nasal appendage, because the nose is the line of continuity.
Born and bred among drums of the raw materials used to create perfumes and
essences, and trained to become in time what is known as a 'nose of reference',
Ernesto would be incapable of understanding the world around him without his
sense of smell. When you are with him, you are aware of how much he is able to
perceive and of how much you are missing—'this smells of roses, of garlic …'—
and you feel like an olfactory illiterate. But Ernesto has always sought to go further,
to break down the barriers of this physical guide, and set out to use this innate and
cultivated ability to build up his collection of art: colección olorVISUAL (visual smell
collection) is his great olfactory chord, commenced 37 years ago. Because, for him,
art smells. And I do not mean physically (though that, too, at times), but rather that
an artwork awakens in him an olfactory perception, an olfactory memory. Thanks
to this privileged memory the works, whatever their artistic language, communicate
something special to him: 'this piece smells,' he declares emphatically. And his
memories appear to him like a cascade, by way of their smells.
This singular approach to collecting has not been easy, quite the opposite: at
first, the appeals to artists and galleries fell on deaf ears. So complicated was the
beginning that this collection almost failed to take shape. But one of these invitations
was sent to Albert Ràfols Casamada, who felt that he understood Ernesto, because
he had painted a series of canvases based on his olfactory memories. Sometimes
coincidences are written somewhere, so that they come to be, and this is what
happened with the painting Lavanda, from 1979: 'I was thrilled when I saw reflected
in a small canvas my olfactory memory of lavender fields, when I was a student of
perfumery,' Ernesto has said. It was that simple and that complex.
From this moment on, and thanks to Ràfols Casamada, artists and galleries
begin to acknowledge this different way of collecting and to help the enthusiastic
art lover to create colección olorVISUAL. This was to be composed not only of the
visual works by the different artists, but also of the texts in which they wrote of
their artistic-olfactory perceptions.
The name … is due to another great artist, Joan Brossa, a close friend of
Ernesto's, who told him 'I make visual poetry and you, with your collection,
make smell visual'. The collector liked this, asked if he could borrow the name,
and Brossa closed the deal: 'I'm giving it to you.' And, in effect, the singularity of
the collection is reflected in this special gift.
But let's get to the essence. Ernesto had a very clear objective in starting the
collection: to teach people to smell through art, and to teach people to see art
through smell. But why was the collector so committed to championing this
sense? Simply because he is a perfumer? Because we all share the same fact:
smell is the first sense that allows us to discover the world around us when we
are born. And thanks to smell that we can be transported back to a past time, to
some experience we lived many years ago. It is, therefore, a sense that leads from
the purely physical to the deeply emotional. Sadly, though, we lose the ability to
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