Crude oil, refined art: Andrei Molodkin comes to London
An ex-Soviet soldier who used to smear oil on his toast (when the Marmite ran out, presumably), Andrei Molodkin has just opened an art exhibition, at the Orel Art Gallery in London.
You could probably get away with describing Molodkin's art as political: he pumps Chechen and Iraqi oil into political slogans, religious icons and any other symbol that will raise metabolisms.
Fractional Grid No 6, 2009. Acrylic tubes filled with crude oil, fluorescent tubes, by Andrei Molodkin
For his latest exhibition he 'bleeds' oil from a Russian courtroom-style cage into a working oil refinery, generating enough electricity to light up a neon sign.
Such is Molodkin's love affair with oil, . ('Maybe I can be enough energy to drive a short way in a Porsche,' he explains to the Times, 'Or 50km in a Japanese car. Or an economical light.')
, what better time to 'confront the role of oil as the source of cultural dominance and global communication'?
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