O’DRIÙ: Art in Olfaction

/ australianperfumejunkiescom

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Post by Ainslie Walker

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One morning in July 2014 Angelo Orazio Pregoni aka O’DRIÙ woke up with an idea – a wet dream, so to speak.

“WHAAAT?” I hear you ask.

O’DRIÙ: Art in Olfaction

Via email he told me his idea of Wet Dream-Coming Perfumery was based on a search for new expressive horizons, free of limitations. He included a video link and a promise that some of his weird yet wonderful sounding fragrances were in the post to me from Italy.

His video was released during Milan Fashion week in response to Vogue and New York Times criticism that the event “lacked novelty.” It shows a live performance of the initial creation of N°1 PI-SCIANEL by eccentric nose and artist Pregoni and N°2 PI-SCIANEL by Tom Rebl, fashion designer. The N°5 performance was showcased at Pitti Fragranze, an Italian event which gathers the best in artistic perfumery.

Here we see them empty a bottle each of Chanel N°5, fill them with Peety (a conceptual art in the form of perfume, customizable with 10 drops of pee) and add to this their own urine. (Errm gross!)

The duo’s only rule is to break the barriers that prevent communication of new ideas. With perfumes N°5 and PI-SCIANEL together with O’DRIÙ, Pregoni attempts to revolutionize niche perfumery via his artistic path and olfactory research. All the while provoking debate and controversy, leaving no one indifferent.

The following (as he puts it) “contemporary artworks” arrive in the post a week later, along with some strange marketing items:
1. Pathetique – 2014 A woody aromatic featuring tuber, bergamot, incense, juniper berry, black pepper, woody notes, oakmoss, mimosa, vetiver and amyris
2. Peety – 2013 A floral woody musk with top notes of jasmine, rose, tobacco leaf and moss; middle notes are mandarin orange, bitter orange, amber, cinnamon and pink pepper; base notes are patchouli, sandalwood and tonka bean
3. Eva Kant – 2013 An oriental spice for women with top notes of grapefruit, lavender and wood; middle notes are myrrh, sandalwood, ginger, magnolia and ylang-ylang; base notes are chamomile, cardamom, vanilla and benzoin

If scent as art and design is seen as a whole concept along with structure, perfume is then the result of a creative process which represents an expression in its entirety and has a value or disvalue in its totality. Pregoni believes “olfactory analysis of a perfume is subcultural distortion. Perfume should not be described through its ingredients, only through olfactory vibrations and oscillations of emotions, not smells.” Further pondering his work we can absorb the performance; the dream, the coming, the awakening/realization/reality, “the mess”(!!) and of what it still might become.

If we can reprogram ourselves from the clichés of mass-market perfumery in order to reignite our “paleo” (Palaeolithic) sensations and emotions, we can believe that olfactory “orgasms” do awaken us from sensory numbness and bring us into abstract reality. A “wet dream” – complete before we even register it as real?

Is this what Pregoni is saying? With “coming perfumery” he wanted to create a perfume that “lives” one step ahead of the present, whose identity is defined by what it will be tomorrow much more than what it is in the moment it is being observed.

Ainslie Walker

19 thoughts on “O’DRIÙ: Art in Olfaction”

  1. Heya Ainslie,
    LOVE this wacky crew.
    They are so intense about making art and fragrance. Pushing boundaries is their daily grind. it’s cool, even though I only understand about a gram of it all.
    Portia xx

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    • Yes they are definitely pushing some boundaries in the perfume world – they seem alot of fun and yes, it took me a while to get my head around their concepts!! Who knows what we will see from them next!! Interesting!

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  2. Say what you will about Angelo Pregoni, he likes to stir up the conversation about perfume. What I’m obviously far too much of a perfume Luddite to understand is how he’ll manage to get around this little paradox:

    Perfume exists only in a temporal form, which is to say, it only lives/is defined in those moments it breathes on your skin. In other words, very much an artefact of here-and-now. So how can it be of the future, when the future can’t exist on your skin?

    😉

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  4. Hi Ainslie,

    I also enjoyed Angelo’s e-mail when it came wafting my way right after this year’s Pitti. Performance art aside, I really like and even love some of his fragrances. My favorite is his Peety (the one I reviewed here last year about this time). I wear it a lot but have never wanted to risk my full bottle with the recommended addition of urine.

    A great selection of Angelo Pregoni’s fragrances are now available at the very mainstream Lucky Scent! I tend to view this as a sellout to the “cliches of the mass market”, but it does save me from having to pay duty when I purchase his perfume!

    Azar xx

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  5. My dear… Thanks for your opinions. I love them.
    Tarlesio… To put it simply, I am sure that world perfumery has never considered its own product as an art vehicle, what does not happen, for example, with a book, as a book by itself lives only in the eyes, in the mind and soul of the one who reads it, and only in that very moment. The serial production of books will not reduce the value of the work. It will certainly be more important to “hold” the memory of those emotions rather than the written words in it
    So art is everywhere, in a fragrance as well as in a book, it’s a synergy that comes from the art work and its audience.
    I know that people often think of my work, that I’m doing in the perfumery world, as a rumbling confusion, or as a ferment that many has described “marketing”, or just a dormant burb.
    But the only thing I wish is that people just start thinking that there exists another way to experience a perfume, a different aesthetic, a no-tradition way. I have an aspiration to take perfume radically out of the shelf of the store, just like a book.
    Getting away from the life and daily odors and re-evaluating all the elementary and pointless gestures and acts that surround the fragrance, starting from the didactic language, outdated and stupefied.
    I suggest new forms of expression, that tend to involve both – the operators and users- equally, and that arise from the fusion of several artistic codes, in a manner that is not dissimilar to the one of a contemporary artist.
    A hug.

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    • It’s wonderful to hear your thoughts on perfumery Angelo. As an artist myself (a composer actually), I really appreciate and admire your courage and originality. I don’t find your work gimmicky at all, but refreshingly different and interesting!

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    • Thanks you for stopping by Angelo. I enjoyed getting to understand your brand/fragrances – I look forwards to smelling more and seeing how your journey unfolds. Life is certainly quite dull if everyone continues along in the same format without thinking outside the box – I am sure you are awakening some new ideas with your ‘movement’.

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  7. Really interesting! I just wrote my own piece on a series of O’Driu’s fragrances a couple of days ago! It’s fascinating to hear what the perfumer says about his intentions, helps make more sense of the conceptual fragrance notes that he uses from time to time!

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