OLFACTORY ART

While visiting an exhibition currently held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, I suddenly became aware of a very familiar scent. Wax! Once again I experienced the olfactory dimension of a work of art before I saw it. The latter remains  indispensable in order to determine what exactly you are dealing with. Now that I am more used to recognize art by its scent (which is easy, since memory and smell are intertwined), I figured that this must either be part of a work by Wolfgang Laïb or by Mario Merz. I swiftly turned my head in the direction of the localized source and there it was: one of the famous iglo’s by the Arte Povera protagonist Mario Merz. The title ‘Dal miele alle ceneri’ (From Honey to Ashes) implicates two interesting and even juxtaposing smells (sweet and acrid, exactly what Scriabin had in mind when he thought of smells to accompany his never completed Mysterium). What you actually inhale is the soft and pleasant odor emitted by the wax panels that are part of the construction. Although it’s almost three decades ago that Merz created this uninhabited dwelling, the smell is still very apparent. I walked backwards to where I came from to discover the boundaries of this olfactory landscape.  It reached  up until the previous room, but when I was  there before, I hadn’t consciously perceived it.