Ernesto’s essence (documentary)
Ernesto promoted the creation of a dialogue between smell and art with intention of teaching people to “Learn to smell” and to educate the smell, the most forgotten sense.
Deaf since childhood, focused his work and his most intimate interests on the development of the sense of smell as the cornerstone of his way of life. Ernesto, as a good synesthete, was very capable of listening, and he did so through his other senses, especially through the smell.
The businessman and perfumer had an inclination for the world of art which not only led him to create a Foundation under his name and two art collections linked to it (colección olorVISUAL and NASEVO), but through art, he created his own character, NASEVO (acronym for NAS, nose in catalan, and his initials Ernesto Ventós Omedes). Through NASEVO, he was able to unleash his creativity and sensitivity, creating artistic pieces always linked to the Nasal appendage.
Smell became like this, the most present sense of his daily life, and therefore, it is logical that Ernesto turned it precisely into the object of his vindication and the personal objective of his motivation.
He realized that plastic artists normally work giving prominence to the senses of sight and hearing, sometimes also to touch, but rarely to smell. For that reason, – by the end of the 70s – he began his personal crusade to raise the sense of smell to the level of others, at least artistically speaking. Ernesto promoted the creation of a dialogue between smell and art, and involving the artists, made them accomplices in this adventure that was born with the idea of teaching people to “Learn to smell”, and to educate what, according to Ernesto was the most forgotten sense, and at the same time, the “king” of all the senses: The smell.
