hipocamps

The exhibition project HIPOCAMPOS brings together contemporary artworks united by memories generated by the sense of smell. People distinguish between 10,000 odours and remember 35% of what we smell. We are therefore talking about a very wide range of objects and situations that can lead us to evoke an olfactory memory, often related  to our childhood and sometimes we had almost forgotten.

Many anatomical elements of our brain are related to the memory of smell: first, the olfactory bulb distributes the information to the limbic system; the next step is the connection of perceived aroma with an emotion, and this is done by the brain amygdala; and finally, we find the process of relating this odour with a memory, it is a hippocampus function.

A meticulous work about olfactory matches is already being done with artworks from the olorVISUAL and Ars Citerior collection material, which has resulted in a selection of artworks that we can see in this exhibition. In the case of the art collector and perfumer Ernesto Ventos, colección olorVISUAL, artworks have been acquired from the very beginning because they arouse his olfactory memory. That is why the leitmotif of this collection is odour and the ability to evoke a memory.

In the case of Javier Martin, Ars Citerior, the process has been reversed, i.e., the art collector has made a very quick viewing, one second per artwork, to select those that are related to an olfactory memory, something he had already paid attention by the physiological fact that he has been losing part of smell over the years.

Finally, the link between the artworks is through the Olfactory Notes, also called “alphabet” of the creators of essences, which in turn are accompanied by their representative colour within the Pantone Colour Matching System.

At the same time, we describe each olfactory note with the raw materials that are part of it. Thus, the composition and balance of these result in an artistic chord. Similarly, these artistic chords that we present are the result of these balanced and perfect artworks of both collections.

Cristina Agàpito