On the scent


To get the work of Peter De Cupere, you have to smell it. In fact, the focus of this Belgian artist’s work is the exploration of olfactory reality. Before accessing the Web page that displays his pieces, visitors to De Cupere’s site are advised to stop and sniff, which makes one think about the difficulties of engaging this particular sense in the realm of IT.

In one of his earliest works, from 1997, De Cupere smeared a television screen—on which a soap opera was playing—with strawberry-scented soap, creating a synthetic balance of sight, sound, and smell. In a world that is becoming increasingly sophisticated, in which only certain tastes are allowed and the smells of the city have been assimilated into an indistinct saccharine background, De Cupere envisions an art whose mission it is to rediscover the rich and varied world of smells. In his objects and installations, which engage both the environment and the viewer, the artist sets a series of mechanisms in motion that stimulate the senses—in a manner, however, that brings into play the precarious balance between sophistication and unadulterated reality…


The full text is published in "tema celeste" No. 85, May-June 2001.




Elena Di Raddo