AC Institute

In our scientifically advanced society, the optimal way to create a portrait is to clone the human subject.

Epigenetics takes into account environmental factors including diet, stress, and exposure to toxins. In five pilot studies at the AC Institute, Keats is epigenetically cloning five celebrities.  His subjects are some of the most popular people alive, and some of the most widely emulated, including Lady Gaga, Michael Phelps and Barack Obama.

Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, artist and writer. Exhibited at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum, the Wellcome Collection, and the AC Institute, his projects have been documented by PBS, NPR, and the BBC World Service, garnering favorable attention in periodicals ranging from the New Yorker to the Economist to Nature. He is also the art critic for San Francisco Magazine, a visual arts columnist for Forbes.com, and the author of Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He is represented by Modernism Gallery in San Francisco.