23OV_Olor de Málaga-16

necessarily of a colour or a form.
When we see photographs of people
clearing away the dead bodies after an
earthquake, with masks over their faces,
we know from those images that
smell is present.
In view of all this, when and started to
think about painting a picture about
smell, and came to the conclusion that
to be honest with the theme And would
have to use a non-abstract medium to
represented it, and that at the same
time the picture would be abstract. In
other words, a contradiction.
To do this and have resorted to the
word ‘smell’ as the most definitive possible.
The word is as lost as a tenuous
gray cloud. To the right and left of the
picture there is a scale of colours that
could represent a scale of smells.
The rest is minute points and tiny that
flutter in space, since smell always accompanies
both life and death.
Denis Hollingsworth
Noumenal, 2007
In Hollingsworth’s oil paintings there
are constellations with an aroma of sea
urchin. [Ricard Mas Peinado]
Hugo Fontela
Water, 2009
Thorns stuck in the bitter dry water,
anteroom to the ocean, rough, full, fast
and constant. Hudson River. Smell of
sea and wind, tide that rocks the universe,
broken, convulsed, ours. Wave
that wets that splashes the memory of
a single dusk and dawn, old and cosmopolitan.
Universal.
Agustín Ibarrola
S/T 22, 2015
The smell of the volcanic ravines of the
north of La Palma was what gave me
inspiration for this work.
Stephen Dean
Fever (Tsukiji Market), 2008
Appearance fades away. The three silhouettes
expand and morph into each
other. The contours of reality become a
fluid mass. The anonymous and almost
abstract vision is structured only by repetitive
gestures. Macabre yet colourful,
this mechanical ballet exuberantly
expresses our most invisible inner
selves. Three fishermen unload and kill
thousands of small tunas in the Tsukiji
market in Tokyo. None of this information
is available as the lens only focuses
on the thermal diffusion of energy.
Paradoxically the strongest physical evidence
which remains could be the presence
of the nearby body of water, the
distinctive scent of the river.
Hannah Collins
Sardinas, 1994
I laid out the newspaper and put the box
of sardines closed on the
paper. It is very simply made, a plywood
box just put together with a
few nails.
When I opened the box the sardines had
left their stain on the paper
covering them and the box could be taken
apart with just a little
effort.
The sardines eyes glint as if still alive
but they are ordered,
silvery and still packed in salt the sea
smell still on them.
Wood, paper, fish, salt, ink.
Bianca Beck
Untitled, 2009
baby
birth burning
love
opening flower
new
mother father
born
beautiful song
silence
and tears
joy
burning through
heart
fire desire
rain flame
baby
birth burning
love
[Linda Beck]
Bernardí Roig
La cárcel del rostro, 1999
As was only to be expected and having
accepted as a given the insubordination
of the affections, Professor Ernst-Rudolph
Mayer of Princeton University declared,
almost without batting an eye,
that the visage was, without a doubt,
the face of unsatisfied desire. The silence
in the auditorium was deafening.
No one, not even the boldest, dared to
blink, let alone open their mouths.
The silence had effectively halted time
in its tracks and the succession of instants
was embalmed. The utterance
of Professor Ernst-Rudolph Mayer of
Princeton University had traversed the
place utterly and had so perforated the
audience's auditory apparatus that the
paralysis was final and definitive.
But, as events have accustomed us to
expect, someone – not the most daring,
nor the most courageous, nor of
course the bravest: no, just someone
who could have been anyone – moved,
almost without being aware of it, the
outer rim of their right opening of their
nasal cavity and smelled the silence.
That small gesture, in itself perfectly
natural, provoked a tremendous uproar
that was the beginning of the end
of the hegemony of established thinking
about smell. And from that founding
and absolutely revolutionary moment
nothing would be the same again
in the advanced capitalist societies. It
goes without saying that the man who
had, almost without being aware of
it, moved the right opening of his nasal
cavity and smelled the silence was
condemned for life to keep his nose in
a cage and, as is all but inevitable in
these cases, was made a leader and in
due course a martyr of the League of
Men who Smell Things. And history absolved
him … but that is another story.
Bernhard Martin
Saure Wolken, 2007
The smell that travels to the unconscious
one across the clouds.
Anne-Lise Coste
Black II, 2011
Because black can be blue
To watch is to build.
Birds are phrasing a way to get out
the abandonment and the alternation,
carve the planet, the celestial body,
because black can be blue.
So I ask myself, does black smell the
same as blue?
Lluís Ventós
AKU-AKU, 2015
AKU-AKU is the word in the Rapa Nui
language of Easter Island that defines
dæmon, soul, or the closest spirit that
marks the rhythm of a person's life.
This sculpture is inspired by the fetishist
tradition of African syncretic spirituality.
When the healers or shamans of these
cultures received a request from a supplicant
they entrusted it to their sacred
spirit or fetish, 'awakening' it.
An important part of the ritual consisted
in nailing to the figure a piece of iron
or some other element related to the
ceremony.
Similarly, in the invisible world of
smells, molecules need to have a degree
of excitation to be transmitted.
This sculpture combines the smell of
metal with that of wood, and in this instance
I would like to define that wood
as sandalwood, which has traditionally
been used in many cultures as a ritual
element.
Clare Langan
Glass Hour, 2002
Glass Hour's scent could be described
as hot and sulphuric. The heat from the
fire and the hot earth burns the nostrils
making breathing difficult. Yet somehow
mankind has adapted to exist here
in this toxic environment, even though
only in the form of a solitary figure. A
constant wind blows throughout the
film both dissipating the air and at the
same time feeding the fumes of the fire.
Koenraad Dedobbeleer
Doing what you do, 2011
Koenraad Dedobbeleer bases his work
on a close and subjective observation
of urban architecture and urban reality.
The artist appropriates forms and objects
that he comes across in his everyday
surroundings, submitting them
to often minimal alterations, either
through the materials he uses in their
re-creation, through their association
with other objects and forms, through
alterations in their scale or through the
use of colour. His works are not readymades
but subtle re-appropriations of
existing objects. Dedobbeleer is interested
in how an object or an idea can
undergo changes of status and simultaneously
exist within different realities
and interpretations.
In the world of smells the same thing
happens: the same essence can have
variations depending on the person,
the climate … it is at once the same and
different.
The sculpture Doing What You Do can
be interpreted as both logo and mask.
It is a small piece of enamelled metal
in which the artist has inserted, in a
somewhat cryptic form, the initials of
his name, a K and a D, and plays with
the idea of the ​double. Each letter can
be seen duplicated in the supposed upper
and lower halves of the elliptical
structure of the piece. The shape of the
sculpture itself invites us to think of a
mask with which to cover the face. A
double game, both unveiling and hiding
the identity of its author.
Are essences masks, like Koenraad Dedobbeleer's
sculpture?
[Silvia Dauder]
Pello Irazu
1986, 1986
Suspended fruity trapeze
crystallized in penetrating red
metallic relief to construct
moulded of acrid liquid.
Polished plaster,
rectangle oxide
solidified and sweet
that cools
and organizes.
Jordi Colomer
She (Elle), 1988
Drawing Upside Down
Buy a pack of dark black copy paper. Meticulously
lay out the A4 sheets to form
a roughly square surface. Repeat the action
layer upon layer until it looks like
a geometric blackboard. Turn it over.
Draw blind on a back-to-front blackboard.
Discard the drawings and keep
the surface. Then draw on the squared
blackboard until this summons up other
objects. Note for example the moment
when the boat in a family photo
collides with a cardboard seashell. Rub
out all the ideas, cover them up and
try again. Move around until the black
square looks dry and everything is in
place. Draw as you think. Don’t rub out.
You ask me if this process has a smell?
Having thought about it, I believe it
does.
Chakaia Booker
Time out, 2005
Industrial, residential and agricultural,
as well as natural smells permeate our
society and evoke visual impressions
and thoughts of metaphorical and ideological
expressions about our day to
day life experiences.
Responding equally to the sweet scents
and the natural and manmade drenched
aromas from our present and past experiences
in the privacy of our own ideas,
we tend to recreate pictorial and
abstract thoughts. The smells help us
recreate infinite dialogues and recurring
scenarios of form and contoured
shapes, sensual and provocative images.
The odours come from natural objects
or objects designed for or from a
manufacture’s concept; exploited by
consumer detritus, then scavenged, and
collected by artists and reconstructed
into multi-scented works of art.
Michiel Ceulers
TBD (Kreuzförmigues Bild), 2013
Whiskey bottles, and brand new cars
Oak tree you're in my way
There's too much coke and too much
smoke
Look what's going on inside you
Ooooh that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooooh that smell
The smell of death surrounds you
Alberto de Udaeta Font
Pasaje V, 2013
Place where you pass from one part
to another
The metals, fumes and gases that fill
workshops and foundries have partially
damaged my sense of smell,
so I recall with nostalgia the smells I
perceived as a child when I would return
to my great-grandmother's farm
in the cart.
Fabulous smells of earth, water, newmown
grass and also of horse, stone
and snake.
But above them all there still floats
in the air the brilliant, sharp, metallic
smell of the scythe blade, very much
like the smell of my iron sculptures.
Gabriella Gerosa
Die Blütenstaubfressserin (The pollen
eater), 2001
The pollen Eater
An eery atmosphere suffuses, “the Pollen
Eater”. A woman absent-mindedly-and
with a repetitive monotony that
may strike as absurd-picks rose blossoms
into which resembles a piece of
handicraft. The mystic alchemical place
seems to belong to a different era, like a
room or a study done in the style of the
Old Masters.
The woman is sitting in a tiny room, full
of cascades of rose blossoms. The air is
full of tempting, heady, fragrances.
She’s creating rose smell curtains.
Alfredo Álvarez Plágaro
Cuadros iguales, 2012
Sniff/Smell
When a woman walks past me I always
enjoy inhaling -I raise my nose slightly-
the scent she leaves behind and at
the same time follows her. In this way I
have subtly smelled many women, and
will go on doing so as long as there are
women that go walking.
When I see a painting exhibited, even
one of mine, I also like getting as close
as possible to it to smell it. Once, at the
Beyeler Foundation in Riehen, very
near Basel, the alarm went off when I
tried to smell Monet's water lilies.
I enjoy smelling paintings very much,
yet I enjoy smelling women much more.
Enzo Mianes
Fragances Posthumes, 2013
Fragrances Posthumes is a work that
seeks interaction with the public
through the smell of the handkerchief
and what the smell is capable of evoking:
the memory of loved ones is revived
by smell, regardless of its origin.