When I think of essences, olfactory sensations, perfumes, the smell of things… that suggestive material that introduces itself into our perception through the sense of smell, I think above all of my childhood. Why this inevitable journey into the past? It seems as if it were only there that the essential record of things is constructed.
When I perceive a smell, a fragrance, a perfume, its capacity tomove me is directly proportional to the evocation it produces in meof the things of the past, of that original unique past of childhood. In that direction are all the indelible records of my smells, smells that are fortunately very close to the earth and its activities. That is the absolute block of smell of my life: a totality composed of multipleessences given off by the earth, by animals and by the activity of thework that is linked to it.
There are countless smells contained within this essential original past block that I can single out, isolate, divide and classify.
Tiny little smells that summon up for me other larger smells in whichdifferent essences group together, accumulate without mixing, eachon its own scale and enveloped in specific circumstances, in periods, situations and concrete sensations of my adolescent life. All of them are smells that live on in me, trapped in some psychological spring that is suddenly activated and guides me, directs me and transports me to my childhood, to that space of infinite Time…

Salvador Juanpere
Barcelona, February 1997