A.L. Drezner, Jessica Higgins, S-, Andrea Torres, Diane Jackson,
Peter Hopkins, Erika Knerr, Ginger Andro, Chuck Glicksman, Catya Plate

a project by Koan-Jeff Baysa
macdeus@earthlink.net

Lance Fung Gallery
537 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

June 20 - July 27, 2001

"When we see we remain what we are; but when we smell we are taken over by otherness."
Horkheimer and Adorno

It's Proust versus Kant and Hegel in this first-of-its-kind art exhibition that foregrounds the olfactory sense and links it to a specific emotion. Proust was immediately transported to a lovely childhood memory with the aroma of a madelaine. Kant and Hegel assigned the olfactory sense to a base function in contrast to vision which was held as the privileged sense.

  Physician/curator Koan-Jeff Baysa engages the primordial sense of fear, one of the basic survival functions provided by the rhinencephalon, the reptilian brain, the smelling brain. The olfactory bulb, which handles smells, is the sensory processing center that is most closely linked to our limbic system, where our emotional responses are processed. This is likely why we have emotional responses to an odor even prior to recalling its name from our linguistic center. There is something about fear that is innately smell-oriented, when the object of fear can't be determined through vision and hearing, and odor may be the only clue about presence and location. In contradistinction to our current inclination towards a detached cyberexistence, the sense of smell grounds us with immediacy and physicality.

  The neurobiochemical pathways of smell have not yet been completely elucidated; in addition, the olfactory experience suffers from the lack of an adequate lexicon to describe its evanescent and intranslocatable properties. The neurotransmitter link to memory is supported by a clinical correlation between the loss of the sense of smell and early Alzheimer disease.

  This exhibition links the sense of smell, art, and performance in relation to the forces of memory, the dynamics of memory, space and time, and the shaping of individual identities, while acknowledging the primacy of this neglected sense. The artists were given the charge of creating an environment with an olfactory component that would be associated with a sense of fear. While linking specific smells to fear responses is arguably personal and subjective, the varied approaches which the artists took to their charge underscore the conceptual nature of this subject-specific installation-based exhibition.

  One person described an immediate anxiety attack with a certain scent in an installation; another reported the abrupt recall of a specific scent in the exhibition triggered by another smell on the following day. Others remain unaffected.

  Since we are dealing with olfaction and memory, the remarkable aspect of this interactive project is that the emotional experiences do not necessarily take place in the gallery space nor, for that matter, in the same time frame, but in the participants' minds.

A special thank you for the generous donations and support of Veronique Ferval, Thierry Wasser and Jacques Cavallier of Firmenich, Cendrillon Restaurant, i Restaurant, Burrito Bar, Nathan Elbogen, James Delano, Catya Plate, Ginger Andro, Chuck Glicksman, Lance Fung, Richard Humann, Top Changtrakul, and the selfless contributions of the artists.

Image 1
Catya Plate
"Sanguine Bedtime Stories II"
2000
Blood and mixed media on wood
9" x 18" x 1.75" (open)

Image 2
Ginger Andro and Chuck Glicksman
"Florence's Rose"
2001
Video, mirrors, sound and scent
10' x 8' x 3'

Image 3
S-
Untitled (Homage to Mark Foo)
2001
Wood paneling, layered scents
12' x 8' x 7'