ODORE L'ART, L'ODEUR ET LE SACRÉ: COMMISSARIAT SANDRA BARRÉ
In 1919, Marcel Duchamp gave his friend and patron Walter Arensberg Air de Paris enclosed in a light bulb. With this gesture, this ready-made in which what we inhale is determined and elevated to the status of art, the French artist, the father of contemporary art, opened the way to a plastic sacralisation of what is breathed in and established: effluence. By choosing it as a medium, by allowing it to enter the pantheon of materials explored by the twentieth century, Duchamp highlighted the extent to which the artistic value of smell is estimable. A precious immaterial, it reveals emotions, revives memories and links what is smelt to the great tradition of the sacred.
In Odore, the works presented, all referring to emanations, outline an in- trospective journey and question the first attachment that brought exhalations close to human beings, predicting their accessibility to another world. The Greeks and Romans covered their statues with anointments, leaving the effluvia to send their prayers to the divine; witches and herbalists manipulated plants by extracting their essences; shamans charged the fumes with the promise of a mystical journey.
Contemporary artists, today's magicians and alchemists, see their practice and their person resonate with the sacralisation of cultural institutions. The museum, now a place of pilgrimage, sanctifies the artist, who seems to be welcomed there in the odour of sanctity. So the link to the sacred is made through a form of mystification of the work and its creator, and certain fragrant works with an autobiographical allure could be observed as veritable relics.
This notion of olfactory relics can also be envisaged in terms of pieces of flesh that recall past moments, that encourage us to feel and to experience. Because scent is an evocation, an intimate, visceral evocation that we don't need to verbalise, but that we carry within us, that we cherish, as we would beliefs, prayers and personal olfactory memories that weave the great story.
— Sandra Barré
