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Artistic Collaboration with Sanaz Mazinani - Exhibit Opens Today!


I'm excited to announce an unusual collaboration with visual artist Sanaz Mazinani, whose exhibit opens today and will feature other senses besides sight. There will be sound and smell as well, and I was chosen to create the latter. Below is more info about the show:  

SANAZ MAZINANI
Light Times
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 12, 2-5pm
Guided Tour of the Exhibition with Sanaz Mazinani: Saturday, January 12, 3pm
Exhibition Dates: January 12 – February 23, 2019

“Light Times” is Sanaz Mazinani's third solo exhibition at Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto. It explores a technical history of photography in an effort to analyse visual language, perception, and the contemporary consumption of images. The studies depart from a set of unique light exposures on photosensitive paper which become the material subjects of each investigation. Throughout the exhibition, the camera-less photographs reappear across different media - unmade, reconstituted and recontextualized as sculpture, scent, sound, or technical print. These physical iterations come together to construct a consideration of the discipline's material capacity to register and document while drawing attention to new realities that form when the recorded information is aestheticised.

Mazinani’s source material is intentionally pre-image, inviting the viewer to focus on the photographic information in the form of simple abstractions made by the artist in the darkroom with light and photographic paper. Her manipulations, and those made in collaboration with technical experts, mimic the strategies of contemporary media circulation: redaction, decontextualisation, and repetition - processes with roots in photography. The works are process driven and utilise a range of methodologies and photographic tools from early photographic history to today. Further investigations offer poetic reflections on loss, time, event, and memory, core to the conceptual dimensions of photography.

“Light Times” looks at the transformation of the three dimensional into the photographic plane, while emphasizing visual shifts that occur through media specificity. The studies work to assemble a map of photographic language, highlighting the processes of photography and situating photograpically captured events, the documentation of the ephemeral/visible, as a relationship to reality created and constructed by the photographer.
Sanaz Mazinani collaborated with Mani Mazinani on Shift, a sound composition that will play from a vinyl record  on a turntable in the gallery formingthe sound component for this exhibition, the Shift LP will be released on Aerophone Recordings in late February. This sound piece addresses the shifts that take place in sight, memory and perception over time and space. Mazinani also worked with perfumer Ayala Moriel to create a unique fragrance ILLUME to conceptually respond to the unique photographic function of registration of light and its simultaneous loss of original meaning. The environmental fragrance ILLUME is a poetic response to the experience of the photographic moment and the function of time’s erasure of that original experience. Furthermore, the artist would like to acknowledge the work and creative labour of the other technicians and artists who used their craft to make a selection of the other pieces in this exhibition, namely Mary Hogan, Mike Robinson, Bob Carnie, Taimaz Moslemian, Noami Dodds, and Jacob Horwood.

An artist and educator, Sanaz Mazinani is based between San Francisco and Toronto. Her work explores how repetition and pattern make information legible, transform seeing into knowing, with the possibility of altering people’s worldview. Working across the disciplines of photography, social sculpture, and large-scale multimedia installations, Mazinani creates informational objects that invite a rethinking of how we see, suspending the viewer between observation and knowledge. Informed by the visual rhetoric and confounding presence of contemporary media circulation, her multidisciplinary practice aims to politicise the proliferation and distribution of images and introduce critical reflection. Mazinani’s works study forms of state control and consider how re-visualizing embedded power structures might interrupt them. In aestheticising informational systems, the artist attempts to contribute to a larger understanding of how conflicting realities are constructed and imagine the communicative possibilities of visual language.

Mazinani holds an undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art & Design and a master’s degree in fine arts from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the West Vancouver Museum. She has participated in worldwide exhibitions in institutions such as the Art Museum at the University of Toronto; the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; the di Rosa Museum, Napa, California; the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt; and the Museum Bärengasse, Zürich. Mazinani’s artwork has been written about in Artforum, artnet News, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, among others. Her work was recently featured in Universe: Exploring the Astronomical World published by Phaidon. She was recently awarded the Zellerbach Family Foundation Grant and National Endowment for the Arts grant programs, and her work is held in public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the San Francisco International Airport. She currently teaches in the photography department at the San Francisco Art Institute.



Additional information about ILLUME: 
Ambient fragrance designed to complement and complete “Light Times” - Sanaz Mazinani’s solo exhibition that explores the technical history of photography and its implication on this art form.

ILLUME sheds light on the concept through the sense of smell, which is subconsciously influential in our formation and retrieval of deeply rooted and emotionally charged memories. Being an environmental fragrance and part of an art show makes it public, perhaps even invasive, unlike the intimate and personal memories often elicited by perfume. Therefore, it was important to keep the scent simultaneously vague and familiar. It is immediately noticeable upon entering the space, yet not easily recognizable and identifiable. 
Wherever there is light, there is also shadow. ILLUME explores this interplay of light with the shadows it casts, both in our collective memories and personal ones. The scent is agreeable yet abstract, with disturbing elements hidden in the background. Its design draws on chemical and technical themes such as minerals and acids, to create a reference to the dark room. These dominant acidic and mineral notes are light and sharp, but are only a mask to conceal the dark secrets and hidden memories - embodied with wet, mushroomy woods and smokey notes. Taken outside of their context, these familiar, mundane smells loose their meaning, or perhaps take on a new shape and identity. 

The scent will be "played" during the exhibit and also sold as limited edition room spray for gallery patrons during the time of the show. 

Peonies


Peony, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

I’ve been wondering about the scent of peonies for a while. You see them mentioned so often as a note in mainstream perfumes. Yet, I couldn’t say I’ve smelled enough of them to recall the scent from memory. This summer, as if on demand, Vancouver’s gardens and nurseries seduce with me with peonies wherever I go. I even spotted them on reception desks by day and hair salons by night. I had encountered so many that I even managed to find a few adjective to describe them. To me, they smell like a combination of a subtly luscious rose, fresh carnation, and a hint of green. There is also a bit of a marigold element but it’s very subtle. There is nothing particularly original about peonies, they just smell like a lovely bouquet of these flowers. I guess it’s their voluptuous appearance, reminiscent of both of rose and an oversized carnation, sparks the imagination. It is hard not to notice it’s resemblance to many patterns in Chinese art, and perhaps this is what makes them seem so mysterious and vaguely oriental.

Thinking about it, it might just be possible to recreate it from naturals alone...


Phantom Peony, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Tree of Mystery



Tree of Mystery, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.
The first time I encountered this tree was in east Vancouver, near Grandview elementary school. I was amazed at how closely it resembled orange blossom, though it has nothing to do with orange. It looks as if it belongs to the fabacea (or legumes) family, just like Spanish Broom, mimosa and Sweet Pea.
And indeed, it shares quite a bit of similarity to sweet pea as well – which I haven’t noticed before. Overall, it smells like a mélange of orange blossom, sweet pea, and a very indolic jasmine, to the point that you’d think there is some civet thrown in… only that this isn’t perfume! It’s a flower and there couldn’t possibly be any civet in there even if you tried hard to find it. Maybe in coffee, but not here…



Mysterious White Blossoms 01, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.
P.s. Thanks to my reader, Veronica, I now know the identity of the mystery tree: Robinia pseuodoacacia, aka Black Locust or Witte Acacia. Veronica, please email me so I can thank you properly with a mini of my mimosa perfume, Les Nuages de Joie Jaune.

According to W.A. Poucher's Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps (Vol. 1, p. 296): "Source: Natural. Flowers of Robinio pseudo-acacia, L. Leguminosae. The absolute is obtained by extraction with volatile solvents. Possesses an intense odour of the blossoms. Chemical: Contains indole, methyl antrhanilate, linalool, benzyl alcohol, heliotropin, and trepineol, with traces of aldehydes and ketones of peach odour". 

THE Rose Bush


Luscious Rose, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

I have passed by this rose bush a million times, but perhaps it is only now, after 9 summers in the city, that I am starting to associate it with itself and with here and now – as opposed to the roses of my childhood (a rare and precious encounter, but nevertheless, it belonged only there for the longest time and seemed to have hard time moving on). These roses are just… perfect. Rosier than any other rose, with honeyed, full-bodied, wine-like presence. I’ve stopped by this rose bush so many times, ignoring the embarrassingly pitiful glances from by passers. Ignoring the laughter of those observing how difficult it is for me to move on, as my nose pulls me back into the deep velvety petals, my arms heavy with grocery bags and begging me to just move on and go straight home, but I can’t… In case you didn’t get it the first time – these roses smell perfect. Sigh…


Voluptious Rose, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Inbetween

When summer is not quite over, but fall hasn’t quite began, a few special notes linger in the air in preparation of the cold seasons and as a farewell for the joyous days of yellow sun and azure skies…

The scent of back to school – new books and fresh paper, clean slates, snow-white rubber erasers and neatly sharpened cedar pencils.

The delicate scent of beach lilies, pure white, emerging from the dunes…

The powerful view of Chatzav poles – those white statues of tiny white blossoms. The bulbs of the plant contain many microscopic needles, that sting the skin when touched. Therefore, the bulbs were used to mark the borders between territories.

In contrast to all this whiteness, the blood-red tart juice of sour pomegranates, spouring their hearts and staining those white holiday clothes.

The skies are still bright. There is no rain. But there is a chill in the evenings. And you know it’s only a matter of days before the trees will paint their leaves gold and crimson – only to shed them and leave them to rot on the ground.

Photo credit: Yotam Dehan © 2006

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