About Alex
Alex Kobulnicky has been interested in chemistry since elementary school, when he spent his term in the gifted and talented program building molecular molecules out of toothpicks and different-colored plasticine. He studied chemistry briefly in college, but after spilling a beaker of nitric acid on his hand, he decided to leave applied chemistry to more adroit students, and took a degree in philosophy at the University of Connecticut instead.
He started painting molecules in 2007, in the style of the illustrations in chemistry textbooks, because underneath the colorful spheres of molecular diagrams is a deep symbolism. We know that molecules form the basis of matter, of the human body and of the natural world, but as neurology increasingly teaches us, they underlie feeling, thought and behavior as well. The boundary between sanity and madness is the subject of countless books, movies and artworks, but in a practical sense, the boundary between sanity and madness is often. . . just Thorazine (C17H19ClN2S).
Thinking at a molecular level also helps draw together concepts that might not seem interconnected at all. We would have no reason to consider insomnia, nausea and allergies similar — but they are all treated with the same front-line medication, diphenhydramine (C17H21N); the link between coal miners, canaries, ovens and Sylvia Plath comes down to the structure of carbon monoxide (CO); and Ritalin and cocaine, used in such different contexts and for such different purposes are, on the level of functional groups and binding affinity, more alike than most people imagine.
His work was recently featured in Chemical and Engineering News, the trade magazine of the American Chemical Society.
Alex lives in New York City.
For questions, comments or commissions, Alex can be reached at:
alexanderkobulnicky@hotmail.com