A groundbreaking free olfactory exhibition celebrating the 30-year career of renowned perfumer Francis Kurkdjian has opened at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The retrospective exhibition, titled "Perfume, Sculpture of the Invisible," runs from October 29 to November 23, 2025, inviting visitors to smell, see, and feel emotions captured in bottles. The immersive experience requires advance reservations and promises to engage all five senses in an unprecedented artistic journey.
Francis Kurkdjian disrupted the fragrance industry at just 24 years old when he created Jean Paul Gaultier's iconic "Le Male" perfume, which became a global phenomenon. In 2001, he founded his own bespoke perfume studio and has since worked with prestigious fashion houses including Dior, Saint Laurent, Rick Owens, and Galliano. Throughout his career, Kurkdjian has developed an audacious olfactory body of work that transcends traditional boundaries, collaborating with artists on installations that have traveled from the Grand Palais to Shanghai, from Villa Medici to the Palace of Versailles, where he also created the Perfumer's Garden.
For Kurkdjian, scent represents a complete artistic medium - an invisible yet tangible material capable of moving people as deeply as a painting or symphony. The exhibition, orchestrated by Maison Francis Kurkdjian under the curation of Jérôme Neutres, advocates for perfume's rightful place in museums, a territory still rarely explored for this intangible art form. At the Palais de Tokyo, visitors breathe as much as they observe, following a multi-sensory journey through scents, sounds, and images where each fragrance tells a fragment of imagination, memory, or idea.
Upon entering the exhibition, visitors receive a booklet allowing them to collect "perfumer's touches" scattered throughout the different spaces. Several installations serve as artistic manifestos, including "L'Or Bleu," a drinkable scented water created with Yann Toma, where Kurkdjian invites visitors to taste perfume rather than wear it. Another installation, "L'Odeur de l'Argent" (The Smell of Money), conceived for Sophie Calle, plays with the tension between attraction and repulsion.
The exhibition features remarkable cross-disciplinary collaborations that demonstrate perfume's artistic versatility. Bach's "Suite for Cello No. 2," performed by Klaus Mäkelä, is translated into olfactory chords, revealing parallels between musical notes and scents. Meanwhile, "V-Scent," a virtual reality device, replaces pixels with fragrances, creating an entirely new sensory experience. Every aspect focuses on diffusion, perception, and intensity.
The exhibition culminates with "L'Alchimie des Sens" (The Alchemy of the Senses), an immersive installation showcasing the universe of the legendary Baccarat Rouge 540 fragrance. Under the direction of Cyril Teste, the installation features works by Elias Crespin, David Chalmin, the Labèque sisters, and a gustatory creation by renowned chef Anne-Sophie Pic - a dark chocolate infused with saffron, tagete-passion, and sweet pepper that awakens all five senses simultaneously.
The journey concludes in the intimate recreation of Francis Kurkdjian's personal office within the heart of Palais de Tokyo. Occasionally, the master perfumer himself will work in this space, offering visitors the rare opportunity to observe the perfumer at work within his own imaginative universe. This personal touch adds an authentic dimension to the already extraordinary exhibition experience.
Over three decades of creation, Francis Kurkdjian has transformed perfume into a plastic language, composing with emotions as others work with light. At the Palais de Tokyo, he offers an experience that can be contemplated as much as it can be inhaled - a sculpture of the invisible where art becomes air, and air becomes artwork. The exhibition represents a significant milestone in establishing perfume as a legitimate museum art form while celebrating one of the industry's most innovative creators.
