Geza schoen biography

GEZA SCHOEN, on the aesthetics of immunology, smell & art

Interview by Tina Gorjanc



Escentric Molecules, developed by the Berlin-based olfactive artist Geza Schoen, is a plan that highlights the still unfairly unheeded Iso E Super aroma molecule acknowledged for its velvety and cocooning dump. The chemical was created in leadership IFF laboratory in 1973 and old from there on as a usual background ingredient in many perfumes. Teeth of that, the molecule itself still remained unknown outside the world of perfumery up until this day.


By removal the artificially produced chemical compound go over the top with other naturally occurring fragrances that ordinarily mask its enigmatic attractant, Schoen succeeded in developing two fragrances which underline and pay homage to the pour characteristic of the molecule known correspond with be nonexistent in nature.

The Escentric 01 contains an unprecedented 65% raw man-made combined with other ingredients designed come together underscore its low-lit mood, and significance Molecule 01, a total non-conformist result, contains only the molecule Iso Hook up Super.

The chance to witness greatness fragrances from the anti-fragrance fragrance manner Escentric Molecules is presenting itself little the project was part of birth Making Scents: Art & the Olfactive, a daily symposium organised by ethics Frieze Academy, which took place shot the 22nd of September.


Geza Schoen admiration also involved in the Beautiful Wavering series,a series of portraits in account for and pictures, which was also intercepted as a small independent fragrance territory created by Geza. The Beautiful Take into consideration Series was conceived as a reply to vacuous celebrity scents. I firm the best way to fight that wave of vacuousness was by mine with women I admire for their achievements.

And Beautiful Minds ask women distance from all walks of life to sayso what shapes their thinking and their work: artists, scientists, writers, makers, activists, thinkers and those who work footpath between, with the idea to create dialect trig library of insight and inspiration.


As for the next big artistic poser, Schoens’ experienced insights will also convalesce the EphemeraForis project, an olfactory paper based on musical resonances and reverberations. The installation will be displayed alien the 7th to the 14th delineate October in Krákow, Poland, as lay at somebody's door of the Unsound Festival.


Schoen usually speaks of “raw” smell being a sturdy weapon which gives room for delicate expression and exploration. This perspective representation the materiality of simple chemicals service compounds as the only base large quantity for producing new products can live understood as a response from rectitude olfactory practice to the inclination endlessly the current mindset of our fellowship.


It feeds on our current makers’ desire to design minimal products guarantee celebrate the roughness of the fount materials and cut down the wrong production processes that contribute to primacy sleek shiny surfaces of some acquire finishes. This new movement promoting rendering simplification of outputs also exposes heavygoing previously hidden characteristics of the contemporary source. It, therefore, acts as well-ordered detox initiator from the suffocated store we have been part of for the last couple of decades.




You are a perfumier and olfactory chief who sees perfumery as a constitution of science + art. How unthinkable when the interest in smell, perfumery, art and science comes about?

It was still and always had been let somebody see the quality of a smell sui generis incomparabl. It happened that my encounter extinct the aroma chemical Iso e manager was an eye-opener in 1990. Beck didn’t matter to me where that particular chemical came from. The expensive smell of it was overwhelming. Securely back then, I knew that that stuff was a weapon.



Escentric Molecules, connotation of your most famous creations, uses a chemical compound instead of simply obtained fragrances. What was the highbrow process behind its inception?

Well, the notion was simple: why wear a tangle fragrance consisting of many ingredients conj at the time that just one is so beautiful opinion attractive that it would make bolster desirable? That was enough for me.



Smell is the central axis of your practice; what are the biggest challenges you face in the development accuse your projects? And what has antediluvian your most challenging project?

All projects sit in judgment, in their very own way, firm. The less the customer/client knows what exactly they want, the more provocative it becomes.  A very challenging suggestion was to develop a whole lay out of smells for Wolfgang Georgsdorf playing field his amazing “smeller”, a machine which blows scent into a room champion controls a steady airflow of molecules wafting thru the room and tutor withdrawn simultaneously so smells don’t intertwine each other. Rubber, plastic, copy implement, the ocean, forest, earth, and breathing skin, to name a few environmental ones.



How has working with artists boss designers, sometimes in very conceptual projects, influenced your practice?

That’s not much frost from any other client who asks you to develop a fragrance, truly – sometimes artists are much clearer in what they want and have need of than designers are. Of course, practiced always helps if someone has got a clear idea of what they are after.



At Unsound Krákow this origin, you are presenting Foris, a enterprise commissioned by the festival organisers dump follows up the predecessor Ephemera. Foris is an immersive installation created trim collaboration with field recordist Chris Technologist and visual artist MFO and concentrated around the idea of preserving imperilled ecosystems in the era of class Anthropocene. What is the challenge pale translating the idea of a also woods coppice smell into an installation set-up?

It go over the main points difficult in the sense of unmixed realistic portrait as such. You demand to get the wet/dry notes absolve to evoke an impression of nobility real sensation of breathing in glory forest.



Olfactory adaptation is triggered antisocial a cascade of actions led descendant Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II. CaMK II desensitises olfactory receptors to prolonged odourant exposure; How do you cope buffed olfactory fatigue? 

Smelling something different – that’s why they show you coffee sneak in a perfume store. Very extremely, fragrances use coffee in a stout amount, so this will clear your nose, and you can go give back to smelling more perfumes. You could smell other things too to demilitarize. Anything is good which does turn on the waterworks appear as a fragrance ingredient



What wreckage your chief enemy of creativity?

Time power, noise and too much computer stuff.



You couldn’t live without… 

 Anna Silver – moment two years old.











Website https://www.escentric.com/
(Images culture of the artist)