SF artist tries to find God on tree of life

San Francisco art critic and artist Jonathon Keats (who, last year, put his brain for sale) is developing "a novel method of genetic engineering that may soon allow scientists to place God on the tree of life alongside every other species, including slime molds, fungi and humans."

The goal is "accurate placement ... of all deities worldwide, including the god commonly known as Yahweh, Jehovah and/or Allah," -- or, for scientific purposes, Divineus deus -- in order to end centuries of often violent conflict between faith and reason.

"The God Project" mixes process-based art (the artist conducted lab experiments, met with scientists and created and administrated the International Association for Divine Taxonomy), documentation (the work includes meticulous photographs and charts and a lab installation as art object) and Dada-esque performance.

"My hypothesis is that the gods pertain to a domain unto themselves different from the others," he says, but the question is, where?

"The God Project" opened at the Modernism gallery in San Francisco on Sept. 29.

Via Art Future < SF Gate,