I don’t paint pictures ...

All the more considering I was working for a company at the time that was working intensively and professionally with graphics and Photoshop. I desperately wanted to “recreate” an intriguing image, so I asked if I could take a photo. When I got home, with the photo for inspiration, I immediately put together an art collage, used it as a background and at the end, I coated the whole image. That’s how it all started, and my experiments were actually an immediate hit.

What or who are you inspired by?

I love any environment with creative colours and elements. I’ve also experimented with that many times over. And I got over the concern or anxiety that I can’t paint “properly” when I had the opportunity to draw Dominic Thiem at a live event and it was received really positively. I then tried more and more frequently to creatively embellish common objects with a different vibe and additional elements, mostly using new techniques –digital printing, spray painting, acrylic and glazing. Actually, as the “pop art kid”, as I was known, it was my wish to “import” a bit of California and a bit of New York to Austria. There’s a hint of Andy Warhol in there, plus Mr Brainwash, genius French pop art and street artist Thierry Guetta, and Banksy, the unmatched British street artist. I like things that are expressive, sometimes even loud, jarring and eccentric. Images like these in particular aren’t just there to be looked at, their main purpose is to inspire. It’s not by chance that they attract so many fans worldwide.

Which techniques do you use for your images?

I used to mainly use graphics, digital printing and collages. Now, I use brushes and spray paints, and I usually collage the background around the image. At the end, everything is coated so that the surface looks like a sheet of glass, but is also UV resistant.

How long does that process take?

It can take anywhere between two days and two weeks – it really depends on what I’m doing, and mostly on when the famous wow moment happens, when I know that I’ve finished the image. The coating then normally takes another two to three days.

What is your favourite piece of art?

At the beginning, there was always a piece that I’d grown particularly fond of. It would hang in my home for a while and I never wanted to sell it. But at some point, I stopped thinking like that because there was always something new and creative that came after it. But there are also artworks that have a human story attached to them, like if there’s been an opportunity to collaborate with celebrities – like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Dominic Thiem at the Tennis Open at the Wiener Stadthalle in 2019, among others. These pieces include artbywenzo.com any images that were created for the Licht ins Dunkel charity event, which were inspired by Arnie’s phrase “When you take something, you have to give back”. They’re all really special to me – not because of the images themselves but because of the story behind them and what they represent.

What are you looking forward to this year?

There are some more exhibitions scheduled, mostly in Switzerland and nearby regions. I currently have exhibitions planned in Zug in Switzerland, at Schloss Gamlitz in southern Styria and at Schloss St. Martin in Graz. There might also be something exciting happening in Leogang at the Puradies hotel quite soon! We’ll have to wait and see…

If you don’t want to see, taste or hear, you can keep your eyes, mouth and ears closed. The nose has to remain clear though, otherwise you’ll suffocate! There’s no escaping scent molecules, and they trigger our emotions and memories. That’s why I think about my first great love whenever I smell Cool Water somewhere – there’s nothing I can do about it.

While the sense of smell is the most immediate, we often lack the words to talk about it. For that reason, we like to borrow terms from music: we talk about fragrance notes and accords, and the ephemeral nature of a perfume creation is even reminiscent of a symphony.

Loud fragrances drown out their surroundings, and you have to listen closely to the quiet ones – sorry, smell closely.

So, just like there’s a perfect moment for Highway to Hell and Pour Elise, there’s also a right time for loud and quiet perfumes –when the crowd is sweating in a club, you need something with a bit of punch, but for a tête-à-tête beneath the stars, more subtlety is required.

It’s the ingredients that make a fragrance loud or quiet. Some take over entire rooms and cause people to keep their distance, while others invite you to move in closer. But a loud scent doesn’t necessarily have to be vulgar; perfumes are often simply mirroring their time.

Until the 1960s, a respectable woman was prohibited from sending erotic signals through their outfit; showing your décolleté, flowing hair and heavy make-up were reserved for actresses and prostitutes. For housewives and women who worked, sharply tailored suits and very little skin on show was expected. But a sensual, animalistic perfume gave them the opportunity to send subtly seductive messages. Revlon’s Intimate from 1955 already had this in its name and promoted the use of two animal-derived secret weapons: the secretions of the civet cat and the territory markings of the beaver, castoreum.

The sixties therefore meant new olfactory territory for men in particular. Before then, they were able to play the cleanliness card in order to smell good: soap, aftershave, Brilliantine – barber shop fragrances, essentially. Gender clichés were now put to the test. People with long hair wearing frilly blouses in the Woodstock documentary literally wafted around in a haze of patchouli and musk, and even today, Patchouli by Crabtree & Evelyn is still considered the Holy Grail among Goths. However, witnesses reported hostility towards women in communes and agitprop groups – you could still be a vain macho even if you were wearing a flowery shirt, it seems. How apt that the vibrant men’s fashion of the 70s was retrospectively named Peacock Revolution.

The restorative 80s, on the other hand, saw the arrival of power dressing: big hair, oversized jewellery for women, shoulder pads and wide ties for men.

These extremes found their match in potent powerhouse fragrances that took no prisoners. Unforgotten firecracker classics are fougère trailblazer Azzaro and the animalistic chypre Antaeus (Chanel) for men, the white blossom Giorgio (Giorgio Beverly Hills) and the ambergris bombshell Obsession (Calvin Klein) for women. I can remember a girl in my advanced English class who liberally applied Poison by Dior. It was really testing, especially for the first lesson of the day and on an empty stomach.

The 1990s saw an about-turn: grunge forced out gender clichés and fashion became cerebral with the likes of Helmut Lang and Margiela. At the intersection of this trend and perfumes was an insecure body image caused by HIV: animalistic sultriness gave way to asexual cleanliness and perfumes became quiet, with citrus fresh, aquatic, clean, ozonic and abstract notes. Differences between men’s and women’s fragrances became blurred, and in 1994, ck one from Calvin Klein was the first fragrance to be marketed explicitly as unisex.

Raw Gold by Thomas de Monaco transposes youthful rebellion and the desire for freedom into a powerful mix of bourbon, black coffee, smoky vetiver and pepper. Ormonde Jayne’s Ambre Royal reveals a beguiling technicolour opulence of the utmost elegance with its notes of patchouli, musk, tonka bean and a generous helping of ambergris. If you’re brave enough for an ingenious fortissimo, you’re brave enough for volume!