“MUS MUSCULUS. A CENTURY AT THE SERVICE OF SCIENCE”. CHE MARCHESI

 

Mus musculus. A century at the service of science, is the new exhibition by José Eugenio Marchesi (Madrid, 1963)  in which he continues his project on scientific Livestock.

 

With "Scientific Livestock" the artist refers to all the species that have provided a valuable and practically unknown service to science and man for decades. Marchesi began this series of tributes with the one made to Drosophila Melanogaster, the vinegar fly, in La Casa Encendida where for more than six months the equivalent of about five hundred years in "drosophile time", flies with different types of mutations from experiments scientists, grew and developed in four nurseries in public view. On this occasion, the honoree is the "mus musculus" mouse, followed by the zebrafish, the "elegans" worm and the "laevis" toad.

 

These animals have been and are bred, observed, modified and dissected in multiple studies, constituting an efficient and disciplined "scientific livestock". The ultimate goal of these investigations is to understand how life works and, as a consequence, human life. All of them, to different degrees, continue to provide a fundamental service due to the difficulty of researching the next animals in the line of proximity to man, such as the pig.

 

The works reflect on different aspects of this use, such as its aspect of real “livestock” en Crías marcadas y_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58adults that are marked of laboratory mice is a very controlled process and with very specific objectives and to mark them, sometimes traumatic techniques have been used, such as cutting off their fingers, ears and even the current ear plates, without counting on the genetic markers that, if expressed in the organism of mice. Or el Mouseman, which refers to an international project in which they intend to breed knockout strains (with one less gene) of all orthologous genes (shared by mus and homo), some thirty-odd thousand, with the aim of knowing by default the function of each of these genes and making it available to any researcher, that is, a portrait of the human being in the Mus musculus research model. Finally, a Labyrinthine Animal of a molecular structure that will be built  where the galleries communicate between the tubes and their own spheres Mice will freely determine their distribution and social fabric. The latter, like the La Casa Encendida hatcheries, question the purpose of each scientific experiment and refer to the controversial opposition between applied science, that which serves a specific purpose, and basic science, where efforts are focused on knowledge_cc781905-5cde-3194 -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_per se y, metaphorically, to the labyrinthine methods of scientific research.

 

The work of José Eugenio Marchesi (Madrid 1963) has always tried to demonstrate the relationship of man with nature and his new vision of it as something strange, foreign and object of study only as an instrument for man. His works form paradoxical images and at the same time visual traps with which he reflects on the subject through the relationship he has with his environment. He has had individual exhibitions at the Ferrán Cano Gallery (Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca); the Ginkgo Gallery and Editions (Madrid); the 57 Gallery (Madrid) or the Lumen Travo Gallery (Amsterdam). During 2004 he carried out the intervention “Drosophila Melanogaster. A century at the service of science” at La Casa Encendida, Madrid. He has participated in the Biotech Art Workshop biotechnology course sponsored by Arts Catalyst and SymbioticA at Guys Hospital in London and will soon present the project "Scientific Livestock" in Dias de Bioarte at the Sta Mónica Art Center in Barcelona.