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KOEN VANMECHELEN Leaving Paradise 2013, installation (Red Jungle Fowl, plants, wood, wire, wood chips, water, food)

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Leaving Paradise
2013, installation (Red Jungle Fowl, plants, wood, wire, wood chips, water, food). Please contact gallery for more information.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Red Jungle Fowl 2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Red Jungle Fowl
2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches (each), ed: 5.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Symbiosis C.C.P 2011, selective lasersintering (polyamide), wood, stainless steel, 19.75 x 10 x 10 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Symbiosis C.C.P
2011, selective lasersintering (polyamide), wood, stainless steel, 19.75 x 10 x 10 inches, unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN In Digest - C.C.P. (video still) 2012, single channel video, run time: 3:00

KOEN VANMECHELEN
In Digest - C.C.P. (video still)
2012, single channel video, run time: 3:00, ed: 18.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Natural Knowledge 2013, encyclopedia of human rights, chicken feet (Red Jungle Fowl), wood, 19.75 x 12 x 8 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Natural Knowledge
2013, encyclopedia of human rights, chicken feet (Red Jungle Fowl), wood, 19.75 x 12 x 8 inches, unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Carried By Generations 2011, chicken feet, glass, 6 x 18 x 10.75 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Carried By Generations
2011, chicken feet, glass, 6 x 18 x 10.75 inches, unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Under Pressure - C.C.P. (detail) 2013, glass, stainless steel, test tubes, feathers

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Under Pressure - C.C.P. (detail)
2013, glass, stainless steel, test tubes, feathers, unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (C.C.P.), 1999-2013 Pedigree installation

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (C.C.P.), 1999-2013
Pedigree installation. Please contact gallery for more information.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Mechelse Koekoek x Poulet de Bresse 2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Mechelse Koekoek x Poulet de Bresse
2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches (each).

KOEN VANMECHELEN Mechelse Senegal x Styrian 2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Mechelse Senegal x Styrian
2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches (each).

KOEN VANMECHELEN Ringed 2012, stainless steel ring with engraving, 2.25 x 8 x .75 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Ringed
2012, stainless steel ring with engraving, 2.25 x 8 x .75 inches, ed: 35 - each unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Leaving Paradise 2013, taxidermied Red Jungle Fowl (chick), wood, 8 x 8 x 8 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Leaving Paradise
2013, taxidermied Red Jungle Fowl (chick), wood, 8 x 8 x 8 inches, unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Mechelse Silky 14th Generation - C.C.P. 2011, taxidermied chicken, 15.5 x 10 x 12 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Mechelse Silky 14th Generation - C.C.P.
2011, taxidermied chicken, 15.5 x 10 x 12 inches, unique.

KOEN VANMECHELEN Mechelse Orloff X Silky 2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches

KOEN VANMECHELEN
Mechelse Orloff X Silky
2013, lambda print on plexiglas, diptych, 12 x 12 inches (each), ed: 5.

KOEN VANMECHELEN In Transit - C.C.P. (video still) 1999, single channel video, run time: 1:46

KOEN VANMECHELEN
In Transit - C.C.P. (video still)
1999, single channel video, run time: 1:46, ed: 18.

Press Release

KOEN VANMECHELEN: Leaving Paradise May 4 - June 29, 2013

> artist talk. Saturday, May 4th: 5pm
> opening night reception. Saturday, May 4th: 6-8pm

CONNERSMITH. is pleased to announce Koen Vanmechelen’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Leaving Paradise marks the U.S. debut of major works recently created by the internationally renowned Belgian artist, featuring live chickens, sculpture, photography, installation, and video, including Hybridity in Art and Science – C.C.P., the multi media archive module presented at the Worldly House, dOCUMENTA (13).

Vanmechelen’s art provocatively reveals how synergies between culture and science shape identity. Biocultural diversity, the realist force that drives his work, emanates from the inextricable intertwining of human life with the life of all other creatures. In Vanmechelen’s oeuvre, biocultural diversity is embodied by a species that has co-evolved in symbiotic life with humans for several millennia: the domesticated chicken. Vanmechelen explains, “I see the chicken as a metaphor for man, and the egg both as a metaphor for the world and as the laboratory of the future. The egg is a protected environment and a source of life. Yet it is also a cage, a restriction from which we have to break free.” The concept of freedom through biocultural diversity inspired Vanmechelen’s critically acclaimed Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (C.C.P.), a global program to crossbreed all of the pure regional breeds of chicken in the world, which he began in 1998. The artist’s ongoing creation of a world-hybrid chicken reached its seventeenth generation in April 2013. To date, the hybrid consists of regional breeds of chickens in Belgium, France, England, U.S.A., Germany, The Netherlands, Mexico, Thailand, Brasil, Turkey, Cuba, Italy, Russia, China, Egypt, Senegal and Slovenia.

The alpha and the omega of the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project is the Red Jungle Fowl. This species, native to tropical forests in Asia, is the original chicken whence all breeds descended. Befittingly, the centerpiece of Vanmechelen’s “Leaving Paradise” exhibition is a live pair of male and female Red Jungle Fowls, who represent both the starting point and future of Vanmechelen’s global project. Over the ages, as the varied progeny of the Red Jungle Fowl were transformed by their human co-species in far away regions, the proto-chicken remained genetically unaltered in its native home. Protected but imprisoned by its metaphorical paradise, the Red Jungle Fowl is now on the brink of extinction with its habitat increasingly facing environmental threats. Meanwhile, its domesticated descendants are becoming increasingly infertile from inbreeding. “Leaving Paradise” expresses Vanmechelen’s vision of blending these domestic breeds back to a new starting point, not to reconstitute the proto-chicken of the past, but rather to set forth a perpetual evolution of diversification and recombination. In doing so, the exhibition raises existential questions of individual identity and life, and invites discussions on contemporary issues including globalization, domestication, genetic modification, fertility, cloning and diversity.

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Vanmechelen will speak on this body of work, Saturday, May 4th @ 5pm.

There will be an opening night reception at CONNERSMITH. on Saturday, May 4th from 6 to 8pm.
Artist in attendance.

For further information or images, please contact the gallery @ 202-588-8750 / info@connersmith.us.com.