The curatorial project Lost Identity. The face in colección olorVISUAL – a tour of more than thirty works by artists from this country and beyond and represent a variety of disciplines, chronologies and styles – is articulated around the concepts of memory, concealment and dissolution, in an itinerary that unfolds in a large mirror and that reflects back at us the multiple faces of the contemporary human subject. As Houellebecq has pointed out: ‘We have tried in effect to replace the idea of God, but we have not found anything that satisfies us. I insist: it is not a shortcoming it is incompetence.[i]

The face, as the saying goes, is the mirror of the soul, a reflection of our deepest and most authentic self. It is the manifestation of what we are, although sometimes we modify it to a greater or lesser extent. Nevertheless, there are studies that contradict the old saw maxim and turn it inside out, affirming that it is the face which is reflected in the soul, given that brain and face are directly connected, and if we modify our appearance, our soul assumes the changes we make.

The three concepts are emphasized with the olfactory creations of the perfumer and collector Ernesto Ventós. Thus, for the area that houses Memory, the olfactory note that represents it is metallic: Memory is memory. The memory is strength, it gives us security. The metallic note has as raw materials steel, iron, copper, brass, bronze and oxide. In the field of Concealment, we are represented with a smoky smell: concealment is concealment, covering up what we do not want to be seen for whatever reason. The smoky note is based on smoke, smoked, wood tar, birch, labdanum (sticky brown resin obtained from Mediterranean shrubs), styrax (trees and shrubs that are grouped around 100 species found in the northern hemisphere in areas temperate and tropical regions of Asia and South America). Finally comes the Dissolution, symbolized with the olfactory note of Ozone: the dissolution means to undo / cancel. It is volatility. The olfactory note of ozone are waterfalls, snow, sky, watery.

Natàlia Chocarro – Cristina Agàpito

[i] Sanchis, I. ‘No me pregunto más de lo que hace un perro’, ‘La contra’ section, La Vanguardia newspaper, Barcelona, 3 October 2012.