PRESS RELEASE

GABRIEL GARCIA

PROJECTO SINESTESIA

30 APR TO 30 MAY 2015

The Synaesthesia Project is based on the combination of my experience as an art critic and curator with my activity as a perfumery critic and editor of the American website fragrantica.com. It is my belief that the sense of smell has been afforded scant attention as one of the senses involved in the enjoyment of art, and, as such, I decided to introduce perfumery as a form of art in dialogue with the art of painting. This dialogue gave rise to an unusual and unprecedented exhibition in Portugal. The challenge was issued to the painter Gabriel Garcia to immediately paint images suggested by the stimulus of designer perfumes […]. This is how an exhibition came into being where sight and smell are brought into play simultaneously, as a result of the free association of ideas and the use of surrealist methodologies, which are very important for Gabriel Garcia as part of his artistic roots. The release from human figuration and the entry into the realm of abstract landscapes and surrealist aesthetics are the starting points for this exhibition. Seeing and smelling art, resorting to memory and the sensations of the unconscious in a game that enters into the limits of the irrational and the animal [...].

Miguel Matos
Curator