Essences Insensees

Art & Perfume Exhibition

"Between dream and reality, the perfume stands and expresses the most sensitive and intimate part of the being". Elisabeth de Feydeau, PhD in History, author of a PhD thesis "De l’hygiène au rêve, l’industrie française du parfum de 1830 à nos jours". (From hygiene to dream, the French perfume industry from 1830 to present day).

This exhibition aims at fully expressing the universe of perfume and will lead us through unknown sensorial experiments and its key words will be: smell and feeling.

In pairs, thirteen artists and perfumers-creators, the "Nez” (The Noses) from the Givaudan company have been invited  to work on the elaboration  of an essence and have made up for it a flask to match the perfume and fragrance. Thus, beyond this collaboration between fragrance creators and artists, the aesthetic and visual perception of this subjective imaginary world takes shape. Transparency is brought to existence, the senses are united, immersing the visitor in a show of fragrance and smells. 
Beautiful or ugly, what does it matter? The fragrant essence tells us the story of an artistic intent such as the scent of tears that has been imagined and captured in a perfume by Louise Turner for Jean-Michel Othoniel. Among the artists that take you in the wake of their olfactory fantasy, one will find the most prestigious names of the contemporary art scene and perfume industry.

Jean-Luc Vilmouth - Perfume: "Between you and me”
Nature is a great part of Jean-Luc Vilmouth artistic expression. Thus, for this project, he imagines a dialogue with a three thousand year old yaku cedar tree. To this testimony of our history corresponds a fragrance, a perfume that Jean-Luc Vilmouth defines with the fragrance creator Jean-Paul Osmont. The perfume is then nested in the absolute transparency of a Lalique crystal flask, hosting a small piece of the original tree.

The artist will spend three weeks in Bangkok to create in situ a unique and ephemeral piece of work during the exhibition in Gaysorn Shopping Centre.

Johan  Creten – Perfume. "Odore di Femina”
Johan Creten continues with a series inaugurated in 1986 with a woman’s bust made by the Sèvres Manufacture. To this woman’s bust covered with fragile rose petals, only the fragrance was missing.

The artist defines the scent of the woman as the terrible charm of the woman, submitting the man to his greatest vulnerability.  Johan Cretan and Françoise Caron, a fragrance creator, then define a taboo femininity with the metallic smell of blood, which acts as overwhelming and transcendent weapon.  An elixir of life and death…

Jean-Michel Othoniel – "Perfume of Tears”
In this project, Jean-Michel Othoniel builds with Louise Turner an organic and abstract perfume referring to the intimate sphere which the artist has stigmatized in a unique tear made out of a block of crystal produced by Baccarat.  A prisoner of pure crystal, this tear is made sacred  and  everyone can materialize it  with his joy and sorrow as a recollection that is kept with pride.