Alexander Kobulnicky

Caffeine
12” x16”
Acrylic and soap on canvas
2010
$300

Caffeine is a purine compound, debatably an alkaloid, found in a wide variety of plants. It is responsible for the stimulating effects of tea, coffee, yerba mate and guarana, is present in small amounts in chocolate, and when recovered from decaffeinated coffee, caffeine is added to many soft drinks. (In some, like Barq’s root beer, the intensely bitter caffeine is billed as a “flavoring agent”.)

The effects of caffeine are mostly due to its similarity to the neurotransmitter adenosine, and caffeine is an antagonist of adenosine receptors. Although the process is not very well understood, it seems that the brain releases adenosine when under stress, suppressing neural activity, causing sleepiness, and increasing blood flow. By blocking the effects of adenosine, caffeine helps maintain brain activity at high levels.

Because caffeine constricts the blood vessels of the head, it is commonly taken as a treatment for migraines, both alone and as an adjunct to more potent medicines. Conversely, caffeine withdrawal can cause the opposite effect — as the brain responds to the presence of an adenosine antagonist by increasing its production of adenosine, the sudden removal of caffeine can cause dilation of the blood vessels in the brain, and crippling headaches.

Caffeine being a stimulant drug, it is subject to some of the same concerns surrounding more noxious stimulants. Overuse of caffeine can cause nervousness, mania, disorientation, and general psychomotor agitation. Death by caffeine overdose is not unheard of, although rare. Unlike many other drugs however, caffeine abuse is uncommon, perhaps moderated by its tendency to cause nausea in large doses — as anybody who has ever drunk a whole pot of coffee on an empty stomach may know. It may be that this combination, a drug that encourages thought, work, and conversation, but discourages overuse, are what have made caffeine the drug of choice for our inventive, wide-awake society.

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, and nitrogen blue. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas