Le Hasard Heureux

A happy coincidence.

Joe Merrell has been making video, animation, print and sculpture for exhibition in galleries and museums in the US and Europe for more than fifteen years. Eyes Are Always There began as the website for a single bottle and the artwork around a Los Angeles installation about UFOs and alien abduction, made with Christopher Gordon of Maison Anonyme.

That first one asked what a close encounter smells like, and answered it from what people who report them describe, referencing technology and biology both. It treated an overlooked part of the phenomenon as material. The fragrances have stayed inside the art practice rather than beside it: two of them were made for a multimedia art show at the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles. They are produced in limited runs, in small batches.