Three scents for Château Borély
Château Borély, the museum of decorative arts, earthenware and fashion in Marseilles (France), commissioned me to create three scents inspired by three vases from the exhibition "Blows: 10 designers · 10 years · 10 vases", which I presented at the after-work event "Thursday, it's Borély" a few days ago.
Since my practice combines photography and perfumery, it was a joy to create three scents inspired by vases that won the Grand Prix Design Parade Hyères.
The three vases that I translated into scents are Spectrum by Icelander Brynjar Sigurðarson, Rot Chili by Laura Couto Rosado and Vase Composé by Samy Rio.
SPECTRUM, 2015
BRYNJAR SIGURĐARSON (1986, Iceland)
This vase vibrates with nature, sensations that I tried to transcribe into smell.
Its fragrant evocation...
Nature crackling, greenness rising and a certain feeling of suffocation of concentrated green. The strength and vigor of nature in a mineral atmosphere, of humidity in the early morning. The omen of a new day where everything is possible.
Then the damp earth gradually emerges from this green hell that crackles around us.
Little by little the green explosion of the beginning calms down and we are in the presence of a green smell that soothes and some woody smell that awakes. Like the smell of a peaceful clearing in which one lies down to connect with wild and protective nature.
ROT CHILI, 2014-15
LAURA COUTO ROSADO (1984, Morocco)
This vase in the making confronts me with myself, with the risks to take to free both my and her potential. Tension is in the air. Transgression is here tinged with red. Take the risk of breaking it or do nothing and loose its potentiality. I set about translating this ambivalence into a scent, on the edge, between transgression and immobility.
Its fragrant evocation...
Our nose is assailed by a pungent odor - like the pointed shape of the vase - as a metaphor of the energy of doing, but then quickly comes a dull, round powdery note which pulls us towards immobility, cocooning.
The spicy note at the beginning is increasingly smothered by this powdery sensation. This questioning about the thread, to break or not to break. It drives us crazy. We go around in circles, like in our head when we can't make up our minds.
Then the passion gradually dies down and we lock ourselves in our comfort zone, like in this closed vessel. No, we are not going to break it. What remains is ambivalence, like a questioning in the distance.
VASE COMPOSÉ, 2015-16
SAMY RIO (1989, France)
A vase that highlights the engineering that keeps everything together. Yes, but what I see is more the engineering of the planets, and their precise course so as not to collide. I see a blue planet with its white ring. It makes me think of space. What does space smell like? According to astronauts, space has a metallic, almost industrial smell (and here we close to the intention in the gesture to make this vase), of rum, raspberry, sulfur and grilled/burnt steak.
Its fragrant evocation...
Our nose is assailed by an airy, very soaring and sulfurous odor of space, as well as the smell of garage, heated plastic and rum. We can also detect a metallic smell and grilled bacon. The smell of atom friction and planet heating, and their well-oiled cogs.
The smell of burning and of the metallic note become more and more present. We get more and more this sensation of mechanical smell that turns around us faster and faster. We lose our footing.
This metallic and sulfurous smell becomes unbearable. What are we in the face of its force? A grain of sand.
There remains an airy, sulfurous, burnt smell, the smell of space, in zero gravity.
These three original creations will be the subject of "A vase, a scent" workshops for children and teenagers on October 27. Register and come discover the world of artistic perfumery.