Canadian artist from Québec, Jacques Deshaies neo-conceptual painting exhibtion, March 12-30, 2003

"The Human Genome Odyssey - Esthetic of Ethic"

The Museum, with the artist, will be presenting neo-conceptual genome art not normally seen in Sweden in this context. In Uppsala, the city of learning, the Museum Gustavianum occupies a unique position as an interface between the University and the general public. It's exhibition on the history of Uppsala University, it's collection of egyptology, and classical antiquity, it's exhibit of swedish prehistory and the middle-age does not exactly qualifies it as "art museum". But in fact, it provides an actual and theoritical space to see and think about neo-conceptual genome art - "The Human Genome Odyssey - Esthetic of Ethic" - it's a heaven for experiencing it without the distraction of other conceptual or contemporary art.

It is not the authority of the Museum as such that accomplishes this, but rather a virtue bestowed on the Museum by it's leader, Ms Munktell, by the institution's staff, by Dr Matts G. Hansson of the Research Program Ethics in Biomedicine at Uppsala, and by it's audience. The Museum Gustavianum has not removed itself from philosophical and ethical debate. In fact, in this regard, they are "avant-garde". It is not important if anyone can live up to Kant's canon : art for art sake. The point is dialogue or devotion ; to art or not to art!

The exhibition : "i art"

The paintings are neo-conceptual in feeling, figurative in style, critical as a gesture. It aknowledges pressing bioethical issues and is a link that reduces the criterion of avant-garde art to it's most essantial condition, that of ideas. By exploring the opposite of the same theme, the dichotomy between the brutal (Transgenic corn - with a fish head) and the meditative (Alpha/Beta Proteome), the paintings register shifts from the private to the social and public dimension of the upcoming new DNA culture era. The person who stands before this art experience vision as a cognitive activity and it's power to show pure folly and pure beauty at the same time.

"Artist, go genome!"

Deoxyribonucleiquely yours.