23OV_Olor de Málaga-16

Francisco de la Torre Prados
Mayor
The Coracha rooms of Málaga’s Museo
del Patrimonio Municipal are hosting,
from May 19 to July 23, an exhibition
project which is not only innovative but
revolutionary. Under the title Smell of
Málaga. Olfactory Perceptions of
colección olorVISUAL, we have the
pleasure of welcoming a carefully selected
sample of the contemporary art
collection of the prestigious perfumer
Ernesto Ventós.
For almost four decades, this great artist
and creator of aromas and essences
has been putting together a collection
of visual artworks linked to his olfactory
memory, to particular moments of
personal significance that have been
etched in the depths of his subconscious.
As he says, when visual and
even auditory impressions have faded
away, smells always remain to recall
concrete experiences.
With these premises, colección olor-
VISUAL as a whole treasures not only
works by great artists such as Tàpies,
Hirst, Fontela and others but also upand-coming
young promises of Spanish
and international art.
However, the collector and the curator
of the exhibition, Cristina Agàpito,
have together set out to do even more
and have presented us with a show that
focuses on the city of Málaga, its history
and its popular types as its main protagonists.
As a result, the visitor's eyes and nose
are filled with evocations of distinctive
smells and aromas related to our Roman
past, to our brilliant 19th-century
industrialisation and to popular Málaga
figures such as the biznaguero and the
cenachero, a now vanished trade.
This is, then, a different and tremendously
attractive way of entering into
contemporary artistic creation. The
works on display summon up a universe
of aromas. The sea; salted foods
like the garum of the Romans; the
swash of the tide; the fresh jasmine
of our incomparable biznaga; the delicious
skewered fish grilled over wood
fires; the cast iron and the cotton bolls
that formed the basis of our industrial
prosperity in the nineteenth century,
or the tobacco that prolonged it, to
a certain extent, in the first part of the
last century.
In addition, however, this fine exhibition
reflects the commitment to education
and to public service, to the benefit
of all our citizens, which has been the
hallmark of MUPAM since its creation
and of all the cultural and museological
initiatives of Málaga City Council. Thus
there will be interactive workshops for
school groups of different ages and activities
for families, for people with various
kinds of disability and for the general
public, all giving special attention
to a sensorial capacity that, in many
cases, we regard as secondary: smell.
The appeal to and stimulation of all the
senses by the fine arts is a characteristic
of undoubted modernity that was
anticipated by our great essayists and
creators of the Baroque. Today, in our
postmodern society, this exhibition updates
and innovatively advances those
postulates with an aesthetic attuned to
the citizens of the twenty-first century.
Ernesto Ventós
Collector
Ever since I can remember, smell has
been giving my life meaning, and
though it may sound like an exaggeration,
even hard to believe, I can't make
sense of the world around me unless I
constantly smell it.
For me, the sense of smell is the most
important of all the senses. From the
moment we are born it guides us, before
the others 'awaken'.
Vivid and often forgotten moments are
summoned to memory by smelling, in
such a way that we can feel the details
of the past experience.
My profession as a perfumer, my having
been born and bred amid scents
and smells because my father was a
distributor of raw materials for creators
of essences and perhaps my having
lacked the sense of hearing from a
very young age have given me a greater
capacity to perceive and to use the
sense of smell.
My passion for art and for smells led
me many years ago to create colección
olorVISUAL, which came into being
with a very clear purpose: to teach
us to smell through contemporary art.
For me it is fundamental that the collection
should have an educational
function, and with colección olor-
VISUAL I think I have been able to
combine my two passions, visual art
and essences.
Each and every one of the works in
colección olorVISUAL has its place in
the collection because when I saw it
my olfactory memory was awakened;
the works are activators that bring my
olfactory memories to life. A colour, a
shape, a composition leads me to say
'this piece has a smell' and can therefore
claim a place in the collection.
It is this synaesthesia that makes
colección olorVISUAL so transversal
and diverse. It brings together upcoming
and well-established artists from
this country and from around the
world with diverse artistic practices,
all connected by the common thread
of my olfactory memory.
It is a pleasure for me to have my collection
presented in the Málaga’s Museo
del Patrimonio Municipal, and to
have it articulated by a thesis as direct
as that which guides the exhibition
Smell of Málaga. Olfactory perceptions
of colección olorVISUAL.
I am delighted to have a chance to
smell the history of different places
and in so doing be able to recall them
and to update my memories through
the medium of works of contemporary
art.
I invite you to let yourself be carried
away by your sense of smell, to see
how much you will discover and the
nuances you will find. Immerse yourself
in Smell of Málaga and enjoy the
art and the essences that accompany it.