DARWIN'S DREAM, St Pancras Church

The first solo London exhibition of recent work by celebrated Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has it origins in his ’Cosmopolitan Chicken’ project included in the Lisson Gallery’s groundbreaking group exhibition ‘A Shot in the Head’ (2000). Vanmechelen’s ongoing breeding experiment that began with the crossbreed of two purebred chickens (Mechelse Koekoek x Poulet De Bresse) where every subsequent generation is crossed with a purebred chicken. Vanmechelen’s new breeds of chickens created by crossing different races share a great many characteristics with all their different crossbred ‘parents’, thus carrying cosmopolitan genetic material. This work goes on to illustrate how we evolve on the planet through increasing migration and exchange of genetic material that could result in a cosmopolitan human genome thereby progressively erasing the obvious outward racial differences.

Chicken and human share a common ancestor approximately 300 million years ago, evolving into the lineages that gave rise to dinosaurs, birds and reptiles on one hand, and mammals on the other. Although Vanmechelen uses chickens in his work it is not really about chickens. He comes out of that great Belgian tradition of artists like René Magritte and Marcel Broodthaers who had a penchant for playing with images and objects as metaphors. His work alludes to pertinent ethical issues of our society like diversity, multiculturalism, globalisation and genetic engineering and poses fundamental questions about humanity, our identity as a species and the society we’ve created. It’s about animals and nature, and after all we are animals so part of nature. As all art should aspire to, it shows us something about ourselves and what it means to be human.

Vanmechelen’s projects are developed using scientific principles accompanied with extensive documentation and he is constantly exchanging ideas with leading specialists in medicine and science. Latest research shows that crossing different breeds has a positive effect on the survival rate and fertility of the crossbred animals. Moreover the genetic diversity in the crossbred population will be higher resulting in a better ability to adapt to a changing environment. This exhibition aims to make us reflect on the boundaries between the wild and the domesticated, what is constructed and what is natural since we live in an era where these issues are increasingly relevant.

Domestication of wild animals or artificial selection is a good model for the study of evolutionary processes and Charles Darwin researched the effects of cross breeding on various animals including poultry and even bred pigeons himself. By artificially selecting features crossing birds with particular characteristics to generate different offspring, he gathered valuable information for his theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1867 before he published The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication he referred to his theory of Pangenesis, the basic principal of heredity and genetics, as a ‘mad dream’ *Darwin’s letter (5649) to Asa Gray 16/10/1867
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In the evocative, labyrinthine tunnels of the 200 year old crypt of St. Pancras Church, Darwin’s Dream will include a living ‘jungle’ and a mini lake surrounded by works in a wide range of media and techniques that include video, photography and sculpture using unusual materials such as taxidermy and glass. Vanmechelin’s enigmatic critically acclaimed projects have been staged at major international art institutions and biennales and in 2013 he received the prestigious Golden Nica award by Ars Electronica in Linz, Austriia for his innovative practice of hybrid art. The different hybrids he produces explore the impact of domestication on our evolution and could generate important insights that are equally applicable to the human race.

The exhibition is curated by James Putnam and Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts