Portraits in Scent
at Olfactory Art Keller
25 Henry Street
September 8 to October 29, 2022
Opening Reception: September 8th from 5 to 8pm
"Portraits in Scent" is an exhibition of olfactory portraits that capture the intangible (or is it the invisible?) that eludes photography and painting. Subjects whose essence has been reduced to mixtures of volatile molecules include public figures from King Harold to Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well as fictional characters. A collection of self-portraits and intimate portraits of artists' friends and family members is also on display.
Liz Wendelbo (Xeno)'s "Daphne Oram" portrays the 20th century synthesizer inventor and thinker through a scent inspired by her hair, ink, celluloid, palm trees and electricity.
Hannah Marie Marcus' "Sad Cypress, No Flowers (a portrait of Ugo Schiff)" is a death portrait of chemist Ugo Schiff, prepared in consideration of his wishes.
George Tedder's "A Shropshire Lad" portrays the melancholic young man from A. E. Housman's eponymous poem with a simple, lugubrious scent.
Anna Novakov's "Healing Agent (a portrait of the artist's great-grandmother" depicts the artist's ancestor, a healer working with plants in a village outside of Novi Sad, Serbia.
Irina Adam's "Scentless Apprentice: Kurt Cobain at MTV unplugged" portraits the late singer at one of the most iconic moments of the 1990s, playing guitar, smoking Winston Lights, wearing a mohair sweater.
Sally Boon Matthews' "King Harold Slain by an Arrow to the Eye" olfactorily recreates the moment of the last crowned Anglo-Saxon English king's death at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Naoko Kusunoki's "Andy Warhol" sketches the pop artist who appreciated perfumes as a way to take up more space.
At the core of Aliaksandra Basalayeva's "Neil deGrasse Tyson" is the juxtaposition of the chill and cold of the unknown and the familiar comfort of understanding.
Bee Sampson's "Agnes Sampson" is inspired by the 16th century Scottish midwife and healer who was burnt at the stake for crafting a charm using a toad to make King James VI infertile.
Alexis Karl and Maria McElroy's "Lillith" is named for Sheila Eggenberger’s character of Lillith, the mother of all demons, in her novel Quantum Demonology.
R.B. Wren's "My Mother, Tiremaker" is an olfactory homage to the artists mother who worked in a rubber factory.
Victor Bartash's "Freedom Isn't Free (portrait of Britney Spears)" reimagines Britney’s first perfume "Curious" (by Claude Dir) into a more modern, self-actualized scent in reflection of the icon that Britney is today.
Killian Wells' "Here’s Johnny!" is a scent portrait of Jack Torrance (as portrayed by Jack Nicholson) from Stanley Kubrick's film "The Shining".
Chibi Lai's "C. Burchfield" is a portrait of the artist's best friend and love.
Ricardo Ramos' olfactory sculpture "Realness (a portrait of Elektra/Dominique Jackson)" portrays the representative facets of the fictional character Elektra Abundance from the TV series "Pose" as performed by actress Dominique Jackson.
Donna Lipowitz' "Green Cicada (a self-portrait)" portraits the artist at age 5, barefooted in the rainforest, wearing a green dress, 1978 Australia, the far north.
Eva Petric' "Ophelia (a self-portrait)" representing the artist's younger alter ego, jumping into all waters; lonely, troubled, hungry, sated.
Eva Silberknoll's "Purple Pink and Blue (a self-portrait)" is the artist's fragrance self, presented together with its two contradictory yet complementary phenomenal selves.
Janine Hagal's "April 10th 1983 12:00 pm EST, Jersey City, NJ (40N44 74W05) (a self-portrait)" is the artist's natal chart scent, based on the planetary placements of the moment of her birth.
Scentless Apprentice: Kurt Cobain at MTV unplugged by Irina Adam
Upcoming Artist Talks:
Saturday, October 22nd, 6pm
Anna Novakov: Yugotopia: The smells of my departed land
Anna Novakov (b. Belgrade, Serbia, lives in New York) will talk about Yugotopia: The Smells of my Departed Land, her ongoing series of olfactory projects. The works in this series mine the artist’s childhood memories of life in Socialist Yugoslavia as well as her dual identities as a Serbian and American woman. These multimedia works often engage scent as a way of triggering nostalgia as well as encouraging sensory interaction between the viewers and the works. The installations are specific to each venue and can be expanded or contracted depending on the conditions and technical specifications of each site. The projects have been presented at ZK/U (Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik) Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art Salon in Belgrade and the Biennial Scent Fair in Los Angeles. This November she will have a solo exhibition of projects in this series at Pleiades Gallery in Chelsea.
Saturday, October 29th, 4pm
Irina Adam: The Scentless Apprentice: An artist talk and multisensory experience
Join us for a brief artist talk by the creator of “Scentless Apprentice”, the olfactory portrait of Kurt Cobain, followed by a screening of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance.
You'll get to experience some of the smells on stage that night, deconstructed by the artist from her scent portrait composition - in particular the ones on and around the singer - the stargazer lilies and black candles Kurt requested onstage, his favorite cigarettes, black tea, his mohair sweater. The complete live concert will be projected on the wall, including the informative and often funny breaks and banter. Every now and then the scents from the stage will spread through the gallery. Almost like being there!
Previous Artist Talks:
Saturday, September 17, 5pm
Sally Boon Matthews: King Harold's Lost Eye AKA There’s holes in this World. Notes, musings, and tangents from a work in progress.
Friday, October 7, 6pm
Liz Wendelbo (Xeno): Daphne Oram; Of Music, Sound, Electronics and Scent.
Liz Wendelbo (Xeno) will talk about British synth inventor Daphne Oram and how her notes and photo archive conjured up her portrait in scent which is currently on view as part of “Portraits in Scent”. In 1972 Oram wrote a treatise An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics. Half rigorous scientific paper and half diary or stream of consciousness, the book gave Wendelbo a glimpse into her visionary mind. Born in the UK in 1925, she was passionate about radio waves and the vibrations created by electronic waveforms: on a molecular level as well as on a metaphysical sense, and as an actual form that she liked to paint by hand on glass. Her theory on waveforms wasn't just a strict science in her eyes, but a way to connect - in a molecular dance. In the 2016 edition of the book, archive photos were added that captured Wendelbo’s imagination: Daphne Oram wearing a wool sweater in her ‘Tower Folly’ synth studio in England (1972). You can feel electricity in the air of her studio filled with electronic equipment and magnetic tape. This resonated with Wendelbo because there is something elemental to electricity - it's fire. There’s also a great portrait of her as a student in Dorset in 1940 in a wool cardigan and A-line skirt against a heavy flower curtain. Her hair seems set in curls and brushed with the finest horse hair. And there are holiday snaps that are accidentally superimposed on the negative, which in free association made Wendelbo think of palm trees planted artificially around resorts and gardens in the UK and Ireland.
Watch the video of the talk here.
Saturday, October 8th, 5pm
Hannah Marcus: Schiff-Based: a multisensory magical realist exploration of the life and smells of chemist Ugo Schiff