Smell: Mike Kelley’s Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites

We typically refer to the “visual arts,” but we experience art through all of our senses. Our new Art and the Senses video series explores how artists help us understand and question our perceptions, one sense at a time: smell, hearing, taste—and that biggest taboo in a museum, touch.

How does smell unconsciously tell us what’s clean and safe versus what’s dirty and threatening? And summon vivid associations and memories? In our first episode, we focus on Mike Kelley’s major installation Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, in which hanging clusters of stuffed animals playfully draw you in, conjuring childhood memories. But when large “deodorizers,” shiny sculptures on the walls, spray a disinfectant on the candy-colored creatures, they become suddenly ominous. The smell fills the gallery and unlocks new questions: Why do these need to be cleaned? What’s wrong with them?

In this short documentary set in Cologne, Germany, and New York, an expert in scent production and dissemination, a curator, and conservation scientists take us behind the scenes to find out how the “Mike Kelley” scent gets made and what it uncovers about our expectations and memories outside of the museum. As curator Paulina Pobocha puts it, “We were talking about the scent component and whether we need warning labels, and I thought that was a little silly living in New York, where you’re bombarded with scents left and right and there are no warnings. It’s part of the world that we live in.”