While attending the opening reception of the exhibition Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art at Museum Tinguely in Basel (Switzerland), we ran into the artist Kristoffer Myskja, whose kinetic artwork Smoking Machine (2007/2014) is part of this experimental exhibition that has its focus on art that deals with the sense of smell. In this video, Kristoffer Myskja talks about the idea behind this piece and his work in general.

The Norwegian artist Kristoffer Myskja creates complex kinetic sculptures that operate like a perpetuum mobile. With his Smoking Machine, we are presented with the absurd idea of a machine that smokes cigarettes and produces a fume that is thoroughly detrimental to health – human death.

The exhibition Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art at Museum Tinguely aims to shed light on the fascination world of odor and olfactory art. On display are works by Marcel Duchamp (the famous “Air de Paris”, Parisian air enclosed in an ampule), Ernesto Neto (“Mentre ninety accade”, an installation consisting of pouches filled with sand, black pepper, turmeric, ginger, and cloves), Piero Manzoni (the infamous tin can filled with “Merda d’artista“, Sissel Tolaas (a white cube filled with the cold sweat of 11 men who suffer from serious phobias), Kristoffer Myskja (a machine that smokes cigarettes), and many others.

Kristoffer Myskja: Smoking Machine (2007/2014). Interview with Artist Kristoffer Myskja on the occasion of the opening reception of the exhibition Belle Haleine – The Scent of Art at Museum Tinguely, Basel (Switzerland), February 20, 2015.

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