Olfactory Art Keller

Olfactory Art Keller is not your average gallery. You can’t just stand back and take in the art with your eyes. You have to sniff it out. Open lids. Unscrew bottles. Call up memories. Breathe.

Housed in a 9-by-23-foot former barbershop, the gallery is filled with scented objects, olfactory experiences, and “smell performances” designed to awaken and tease your sense of smell. Yes, they're as fabulous as they sound.

Some artists are perfumers, but many more are creators working with scent to conjure mythical, historical, or entirely imaginary encounters: the resinous air of a dying pine forest, the musk of a teenage boy’s bedroom, the intangible aroma of passion or shame. Together, they explore the power of scent to remind us of our humanity.

Each exhibition is a tiny act of self-destruction: every time you inhale a new smell, you break apart the molecules bound to your receptors. In that moment, you’re altering—at the cellular level—your experience of the world forever.

Andreas Keller, who calls himself “the smell guy,” holds a Ph.D. in genetics from Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg in Germany and a second degree in the philosophy of smell from the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2006, he published a book titled Philosophy of Olfactory Perception. He opened Olfactory Art Keller in 2021. His mission? Get people to activate the fifth sense and start smelling.