Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Gateways to Awareness explores the role of memory, perception and the five senses in our appreciation of art and the world around us. The artworks included in the exhibition engage the viewer in multi-sensory experiences across a variety of genres and media including disability, floral, olfactory, and sound art(s). This year-end show is a veritable tasting menu of the experimental and experiential forms of art the Museum is scheduled to present over the next two years.

Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Artist Bio

Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Artist, writer, and educator Brian Goeltzenleuchter was born in San Diego in 1976. Through an artistic practice that uses digital and analog technologies to mediate the senses of sight, sound, touch, and smell, Goeltzenleuchter designs situations which explore the use-value of culture and the role of cultural institutions in the shaping of the social sphere. His current artwork considers the way in which personal and cultural narratives can be expressed through the sense of smell. He creates maps—not for way-finding, but for place-making—as a means of locating the “self” and the “other” in the city. Goeltzenleuchter’s socially engaged art has been critically celebrated for expanding the olfactory potential for contemporary art. He earned his MFA at UC San Diego. He is Faculty Fellow in the Weber Honors College and Research Fellow at the Institute for Public and Urban Affairs, San Diego State University.
Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Scents of Exile is an ongoing art project started in 2019 that bears witness to the immigrant experience, one person at a time. For Scents of Exile, artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter interviews refugees and other immigrants about their scent memories of home. Odors, which are ephemeral and fleeting, have a strong connection to place and often elicit vivid and emotional memories—a phenomenon known as the “Proust effect.” Goeltzenleuchter uses the interviews as inspiration to create fragrances using cosmetic-grade materials. These fragrances are then embedded in hand sanitizer. Each Scents of Exile station consists of a freestanding hand sanitizer dispenser filled with scented sanitizer and a printed display summarizing the interviewee’s story and scent memories.

Goeltzenleuchter intends for the Scents of Exile stations to be installed at cultural institutions for use by the public on a day-to-day basis. As such, the artworks function as dispersed counter-monuments that expand our individual and collective self understanding by raising awareness of the diversity of immigrant experiences. When a visitor sanitizes their hands, the fragrance is transferred to the visitor who will carry it with them after leaving the institution, thereby taking the scent memory with them and becoming part of the artwork in a performative act.
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, PAULA, 41, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, MARIA, 43, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, QASIM, 36, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, PEDRAM, 48, 2021
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print

Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins
Photo Credit: Jeffrey Robins

Brian Goeltzenleuchter
Scents of Exile, ABENA, N/A, 2019
Freestanding hand sanitizing dispenser, an unsigned, unnumbered edition of scented hand sanitizer, and a corresponding relief print