Alexander Kobulnicky

Sarin #1
11”x14”
Acrylic on canvas
2010
$200 Sold!

Discovered in 1938, sarin was originally supposed to be a pesticide. Many pesticides have a structure similar to sarin, the so-called organophosphates, which inhibit the enzymye acetylcholinesterase in insects, causing the cholinergic parts of the nervous system to cease working. Since these functions typically include breathing, poisoned insects die rapidly.

Sarin works in a very similar way, but like its sister compound VX, affects humans as well as bugs. Sarin is extremely toxic, fatal in concentrations less than 1/500th that of cyanide. Being a simple compound, it is comparatively easy to produce, and has been used by such diverse bad actors as Saddam Hussein and the Aum Shinrikyo death cult, who used sarin in an attack on the Tokyo subway. Nazi Germany manufactured 10 tons of sarin shortly before its defeat, but never got a chance to deploy it.

Sarin kills in a particularly lurid way and although antidotes are available and highly effective sarin kills so quickly that there is often not enough time to administer them. Since the nerves that are most dependent on acetylcholinesterase are those of the parasympathetic nervous system, the first effects are felt in the parts of the body that the parasympathetic nervous system controls. Sarin causes a runny nose and constricted pupils, drooling, vomiting and incontinence. As other parts of the nervous system break down, victims fall into a coma, experience seizures, and die.

These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, oxygen red, phosphorous orange and fluorine chartreuse. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas