colección olorVISUAL
the lost identity. the face, colección olorVISUAL (Itinerary)
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.
Past Exhibitions
Scent of Castelló. Olfactory perceptions of colección olorVISUAL
Fundación Ernesto Ventós
Smells activate our memories, though we may not be aware of this until something draws our attention to it. The sense of smell guides us from the moment we are born and is essential to the construction of the olfactory memories that connect with our most intimate self as we construct our olfactory memory.
Scent of Castelló. Olfactory Perceptions of colección olorVISUAL aims to remind us, through the scents and contemporary artworks from the collection, of events that configure the history of the city.
Slowly a smell at the back of your gaze
Slowly a smell at the back of your gaze is an exhibition that is understood as a crossing of gazes and feelings. The first crossing is of my gaze with the works of colección olorVISUAL and thus with the gaze of Ernesto Ventós himself. It is a gaze that did not work alone: the collector’s sense of smell was what valued his predilection for the works. In this meeting of gazes arises the selection of works that is presented here, before your own gazes, as another crossing. An exhibition that gazes to give a possible feeling to a vast collection, supplied and based exclusively on the senses –physical and conceptual– and sentiments of its founder.
Tracking Shot of Smells
‘Digital’ and ‘smell’ seem like two mutually exclusive words, but in this little exhibition their conjunction makes perfect sense. Tracking Shot of Smells brings together a selection of videos from the colección olorVISUAL at the Fundación Ernesto Ventós, all of which were chosen to be part of the colection because they awakened the olfactory memory of its founder.
Smelling Art
Ernesto Ventós has left us an extensive legacy, with the foundation that bears his name Fundación Ernesto Ventós, which is not only focused on art, but also wants to enhance and give importance to the sense of smell, from its most social side.
The Ernesto Ventós Foundation has the social mission of bringing the olfactory world closer to people, because its experience and recognition take on the value it acquired for the perfumer Ventós.
the lost identity. the face, colección olorVISUAL
The curatorial project Lost Identity. The face in colección olorVISUAL – a tour of more than forty 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 need for the infinite. Monochromes in colección olorVISUAL
I just saw some dense, deep and velvety charcoal drawings by José Miguel Pereñíguez. The presence of the black tones that the artist places with mastery on cardboard makes it to cease being a drawing, becoming closer to a monochrome painting instead. Regarding this idea, some classics such as Yves Klein and his golden and blue works, Lucio Fontana, with his wounded white tones, the black ones of Malévich, the McCollum art installations or the works of Agnes Martin, Saura, Morandi or Ellsworth Kelly come to my mind. All in essence have a single dominant color, surface on which tensions, enchantment, complexities, problems or serenity occur.
