Koen Vanmechelen's chicken art is something to squawk about

(And why not, when Damien Hirst has his formaldehyde sharks and cows?)

The actual experimental chickens are only a small piece of Vanmechelen's work. He also photographs the chickens. He makes chicken drawings, incorporating corn and feathers. He runs videos of trembling eggs, and he still eats chicken because he was raised eating chicken and he doesn't want anyone to think that he is making a political statement when he is really making art. "Cosmopolitan Chicken" has recently been showcased at the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. The Conner show is Vanmechelen's first solo exhibit in a U.S. gallery. The artist is also known for his "Cosmogolem" project, a series of towering wooden sculptures symbolizing children's rights.

The "Cosmopolitan Chicken Project" has brought Vanmechelen to every country in Europe, and all chicken-inhabited continents except for Australia. He has chicken farms in six countries. Chicken transport for a single crossbreeding can cost up to $22,000, and Vanmechelen finds symbolism in the red tape that he must work around to bring the chickens together.

"How difficult it is for a chicken to come to Belgium is linked to Belgium" -- to its fears and phobias and official policies, he says. Bringing a chicken from Russia was nearly impossible, and there was so much fear over disease in African livestock that he eventually opened a farm in Tanzania and took himself to the chicken. That's also symbolic, Vanmechelen says. Think how difficult it must be for humans to cross those borders.

Hardly chicken feed

Although he's received some foundational support for "Cosmopolitan Chicken," Vanmechelen says that most of the funding comes from sales of his work. His smaller works at Conner will go for around $3,500; buying the whole installation could run up to $100,000, says Leigh Conner of the gallery. The chickens are for sale, too, but not while they're alive. If art patrons become attached to a particular chicken, they may purchase the taxidermied version after its demise.

"The project is about multiculturalism, globalism, genetic engineering, diversity, so many things," Vanmechelen says. "It represents what we are doing with society." An empty incubator stands at the front of the gallery, which represents "the desire to have the upcoming generation."

A CD soundtrack of clucking plays on loop.

Jamie Smith, the curator of Conner Contemporary, first learned of Vanmechelen's work while studying in Belgium on a fellowship several years ago. She went to a contemporary art museum in Hasselt, saw his chickens, and thought, "Well, this is the cutting edge of realism."

She's followed him ever since. "Like all good art, it shows us something about ourselves," Smith says. "His use of material is very profound," and so, too, is the idea that the gallery itself becomes yet another cage. "I think the point is that as long as we're engaged with the material world, we can never be free."

In some of Vanmechelen's larger exhibits, he's able to showcase all the living generations of the project at once, in long rows of wood-and-wire coops.

At Connor he'll be showing only three chickens -- all Jersey Giants purchased specially for the exhibit from a farm outside of Charlottesville. After the show ends in December, a friend of Smith's will take them in, where they will live out the rest of their days in comfort and seclusion.

A reporter at the gallery was unable to discern how they felt about their brief foray into fame.

Cosmopolitan Chicken Project

Nov. 7 to Dec. 31 at Conner Contemporary Art, 1358 Florida Ave. NE. Call 202-588-8750 or visit http://www.connercontemporary.com.