Saliva. Julie C. Fortier – Luis Adelantado Valencia

Press release/Dossier/Vídeo

 
 
Saliva. Julie C. Fortier

 
 
Julie C. Fortier. Immunité, 2018. Porcelain tears, polyester thread, sewing needles, two perfumes created by the artist. 170 x 5 x 20 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Immunité, 2018. Porcelain tears, polyester thread, sewing needles, two perfumes created by the artist. 170 x 5 x 20 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Immunité, 2018. Porcelain tears, polyester thread, sewing needles, two perfumes created by the artist. 170 x 5 x 20 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Immunité, 2018. Porcelain tears, polyester thread, sewing needles, two perfumes created by the artist. 170 x 5 x 20 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Saliva, 2023. Room 4. General view.
Julie C. Fortier. Que salive l'horizon, 2022. Hand tufted wool carpet, five blown glass pieces, three perfumes. 286 x 580 x 27 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Que salive l'horizon, 2022. Hand tufted wool carpet, five blown glass pieces, three perfumes. 286 x 580 x 27 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Que salive l'horizon, 2022. Hand tufted wool carpet, five blown glass pieces, three perfumes. 286 x 580 x 27 cm.
Julie C. Fortier. Que salive l'horizon, 2022. Hand tufted wool carpet, five blown glass pieces, three perfumes. 286 x 580 x 27 cm.


 
 

Press release


Julie C. Fortier’s work is constructed around processes of olfactory perception and memory, creating evanescent scentscapes in which narrativity is cut across by a memory or a sensation that prompts an image. The vaporous character of scents is given form through perfumes, installations, drawings and more.
Magic is something that takes place from outside inwards. As we try to grasp her works, their subtle visual forcefulness inexorably draws us in. And it is in this approximation when our senses come into play. Fresh, acidic, bitter, sweet, brilliant, fruity… aromas waft and permeate our olfactory system, arousing a myriad of sensations that trigger an inner immobile journey to the archive of our personal memories.
Fortier inundates one whole room with two sensorial scentscapes. One, represented through the main piece, Que salive l’horizon (Let the Horizon Salivate), which returns elements of the natural landscape to a domestic scale, adopting the form of an olfactory rug with coloured patterns like geological strata, alternating colours and becoming dense and bulky, revealing a gap from which stratified glass seeds emerge. This scentscape rug is punctuated by three smells, mingling in the space depending on the unpredictable movements of visitors, who play a key role in completing the meaning of the piece. The waft of the scents in the room conjures other spaces, ghosts and memories in those who allow themselves to be impregnated by this flow of perfumes and sensations.
The second scentscape is evoked by Immunité (Immunity), a piece in which the artist starts out from the idea of consolation as an expression of tenderness and an acknowledgement of the capacity of weeping to alleviate and then provoke a sensation of wellbeing through the production of endorphins and prolactin. Julie C. Fortier conceives this work as a sheltering refuge where we can find handmade porcelain teardrops that maintain an intentional porosity which diffuses two scents especially conceived with chemical extracts to favour the production of the aforementioned hormones in the human organism, generating euphoric, calming or immunostimulant effects. The work thus produces both an aesthetic and a chemical effect on the body and the emotions.