Following the Lure of the Scent: Exploring the Power of Fragrance
Posted on 25 April 2012 | By Edward Rubin
The artist Janet Bellotto’s exhibition The Lure,
seen at the De Luca Fine Arts Gallery several months ago, proved
intellectually engaging in the infinite number of ideas that it
conjured, and was, at its very root, sensuous, seductive, and romantic,
albeit in a self-contained, carefully-orchestrated manner. That is,
despite the traditionally feminine thematic elements of flowers and
perfumed fragrances inherent in the work, the Dubai/Toronto-based artist
displayed not one ounce of sentimental gush or sappiness. An
experimental artist at heart, with a bent towards the natural and social
sciences, she excludes no method or persuasion a characteristic that
Bellotto is known for –to get to the heart of the matter. In this 2011
exhibition, using video, sculpture, and photography, the artist adopted a
cubistic approach to explore the subject of scent from many angles.
Effectively curated by gallery director Corrado DeLuca,
The Lure
began in the street-facing front window of the gallery with a large,
intoxicatingly blood-red circular photograph of a bouquet of red roses
entitled
Bliss or Torture (2011). Like other works of Bellotto
on display, it appeared to be alive and moving…the eye-fooling trick at
work? The artist’s use of a lenticular printing process, a technology in
which a special lens produces layered images to create an illusion of
depth, allows the image to flip back and forth when viewed from
different angles. Like temptation itself,
Bliss or Torture, was both inviting and portentous—a point the artist successfully entertained in other of works on view.
While the beauty of
Lure appealed primarily to the bodily
senses—visual first, then olfactory—at its core, the exhibition’s
conceptual nature required thought and contemplation, for each
flower-based work became a receptacle of the artist’s ideas. For those
who elected to take the course, it was also a study of flowers—red and
white roses, narcissus, dandelions, deadly nightshades, daffodils—as
metaphors for the power of fragrance to cite history, trigger memory and
awaken our emotions. Bellotto also hinted, not too subtly, I thought,
of her own experience with “clouds of scent that follow many people,”
as well as aromas infusing the air in perfume parlors that are
predominant in the United Arab Emirates—Dubai in particular—where she
co-chairs and teaches in the Department of Art and Design at Zayed
University.
Entry to
Lure was an encounter with
The Grass is Greener
(2011), a blown glass, shell-shaped sculpture filled with grass-scented
oil, colored black with the addition of india ink, the very oil, as the
artist informed me, that instigated this project. “The smell of the oil
reminded me of cut grass, something not usually found in the desert
climate of the Emirates.” Further embracing the sense of smell,
Bellotto’s
Flora from the Emirates (2009), portrayed a
museum-type vitrine lined with vials of perfumed oils. “I began
collecting various perfume oils that reminded me of nature – or nature-
filled moments that I could not experience in the UAE. The purpose of
putting them on display was to create another picture of the flower, a
visual transition through the colors of the scents.” Indeed, this is
exactly what happened. In “viewing” the vials, each with its own color
and fragrance – grass, saffron, rose, jasmine, and oud, whose smell is reminiscent of a damp forest wood – I
found myself trying to visualize, but actually succeeding with the more
familiar flowers, grass, and plants, that the oils were extracted from.
In
Floral Façade (2011), four facemasks on paper with
perfumed essence, Bellotto fashioned a series to fool the eye, nose and
mind, not unlike various species of insect-eating plants using these
same elements of form, color, and smell to mask their imminent danger.
Like unsuspecting insects, one is drawn to the beauty of the flowery
masks; on closer inspection, however, their beauty turns horrific, the
realization gradually occurring that each mask, deliberately camouflaged
with an enticing design, is used solely to enable its wearer to
breathe, not only easily, but sometimes, to breathe at all.
Mirror of Opposites and
Envy,
the smallest and simplest of the masks, half-face masks, in fact, are
the type used to filter air for asthmatics and others with respiratory
problems. The most ghastly of the group – ironically the most compelling
in size, shape and design – proved to be
Weeds of Dreams and
Deadly Bed of Roses, full-face gas masks worn by firemen and soldiers at war.
In
The Niche of Your Hair (2011), a literary-based wall installation, Bellotto
, whose hair is down past her waist – perhaps, like many coifs in the Emirates, even perfumed – made use of the pei
neta, a large decorative comb worn under a mantilla or lace
covering, as a metaphor relating the scent and flow of perfume and its
romanticism, to that of the hair. Each of the seven acrylic
peinetas
on view, all intricately designed and laser-cut by the artist,
contained words from the title or body of poems discussing perfume. Here
the romantic sonnets of Baudelaire, Shakespeare, and others, served her
well. In one
peineta, Bellotto, in a bow to the multibillion dollar cosmetic industry, used the words
Montezuma Red,
the color of the lipstick that Elizabeth Arden created for women in the
armed forces during World War II, to match the red on their uniforms.
The two most mesmerizing works in Bellotto’s exhibition – due to their
cinematic beauty – were her digitally-manipulated videos,
The Lure and
Blow
(2011). In each one-minute piece, assembled from Internet-appropriated
footage looped to run continuously, she managed, without wandering too
far from her exploration of perfumed fragrance and the olfactory sense,
to link the visuals’ rhythms to the viewer’s own breathing patterns; and
perhaps, if one’s imagination allowed—as mine did—to one’s sexual
responses. In
Blow, a row of Narcissus lined up like dancing
chorus girls at the skirt of a stage, performing nature’s dance. They
first appeared as buds, then, like the shooting fireworks of an orgasm,
exploded violently into bloom.
The Lure pitted two contrasting elements– a large, wavering pink flower and
billowing puffs of smoke–face to face. Just as in life, Bellotto left it
to the viewer to determine whether the subject was a kind of symbolic,
balletic pas de deux, or a duel to the death.
By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer
The Lure, appeared at De Luca Fine Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada, in November, 2011
www.delucafineart.com
http://www.artesmagazine.com/2012/04/janet-bellotto-at-de-luca-fine-art-gallery-toronto-canada/
artes fine arts magazine
