Pamela Rosenkranz’s Swiss Pavilion in Venice to the Serpentine Gallery’s own perfume, Alice Hattrick investigates the art world’s increasing engagement with scent.
smell in art
The newest (April) issue of the main Swiss art monthly publication, Kunstbulletin, features an article on Swiss artist, Anna-Sabina Zürrer, titled “Die Suche nach der Essenz” (The Search for the Essence) written by SCI’s Claus Noppeney and Ashraf Osman.
A second look inside–and a different take on–a couple of art exhibits examining scent, by Ashraf Osman and Claus Noppeney:
Anicka Yi is known for her interest in feminism, body politics, and sensory experience and thus a point of reference for reflecting on the sense of smell in art.
You may be familiar with exhibitions that have presented perfume as olfactory art. However, olfactory art is a genre of fine art pertaining to smell that traces its roots back to the avant-garde, early in the twentieth century. A new exhibition at Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland, establishes these historical origins of the genre while showcasing a wide range of practices to the present day that could be understood under this rubric.
In the context of upcoming research on the sense of smell in contemporary art practice, Ashraf Osman recently conducted interviews with two key players in the realm: Brian Goeltzenleuchter, an artist based in San Diego, CA, and Robert Blackson, a curator based in Philadelphia, PA. The interviews focused on the norms, processes, and institutions that promote or hinder the use of the sense of smell in art.
Scent is now a topic a Bern University of the Arts. Here is the story:
The Zurich based NZZ published an overview on the current landscape of art & olfaction by Claus Noppeney & Nada Endrissat: