For her recent show at M + B gallery in Los Angeles, artist Lisa Eisner appropriately employed the Greek word psychonaut, or 'sailor of the mind' to describe her psychedelic body of work, which consists of kaleidoscopic photo collages, a photo-clad geodesic dome and 'scent sculptures'.
Although I'm unsatisfied with the vague and completely verbal description of these scent sculptures on her artist site, for the sake of a little romance I'm choosing to believe that they exist, and that they are indeed as cool as their name implies.
Inspired by nature, Native American culture, geometry and Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome (in which she says she'd like to live), Eisner's compositions are actually hand-crafted collages; for Psychonaut she has not used any photo editing software. I'm particularly drawn to her technique of crafting alluring patterns out of natural textures; she's not interested in showing us the full recognizeable forms (like flower petals) that she's photographed.
Admittedly this exhibit seized my attention because of the scent sculptures, images of which seem to be non-existent on the web. But again, I will assume that they have been actualized and not merely a figment of the artist's (and my) imaginations. For these alleged scent sculptures, Lisa asked her friend Haley Alexander van Oosten, who founded the artisan perfumery L’Oeil du Vert, to concoct a scent to be diffused out of a nebulizing tube to evoke “that sense of mystery that lives in plants.”
The psychonaut scent includes champa flower, which is "a sexy deep note, kind of like an orange flower blossom—almost a dirty smell. It’s a gorgeous flower but people don’t recognize it as a flower right away. They’re grown in India, where it’s warm." Bee balm, sage and several kinds of resin comprise the undernotes.
According to one blogger, the scentual component of the show was an "olfactory extravaganza" while another described the experience as "like walking into an orgy." Alrighty then.
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