Andrei Molodkin Russia, b. 1966

Andrei Molodkin was born in Boui, Moscow, in 1966. Currently he lives and works in Paris, France. Both of his parents taught at the university and he went to art school at the age of 12 and was first inspired by tattoos, which at the time were illegal in Russia. Molodkin later served in the Russian Army, where he worked in Siberia delivering oil.

Molodkin conceptualizes the ideas of our present day culture in an ongoing series of crude oil sculptures. The artist collects residue oil from the pipelines of national corporations to create his art. In a labor-intensive process, wax sculptures are casts into acrylic blocks. Through means of heat and pressure the wax sculpture melts away - leaving a negative space. The hollow imprint of the mold is then filled with crude oil creating liquid sculptures.

In the human body parts series, oil flows within organs, reflecting the depth of our oil dependent society; oil becomes our cultural blood. The artist states that culture is an emptiness we have to fill and affirm with economics – “vacant forms are easily filled with equally vacant content, including any ideology and any discourse.” In the era of globalization, oil becomes a homogenous socio-cultural reference used by Mr. Molodkin as raw material for art.

Andrei Molodkin's work received international critical acclaim and was reviewed favorably by numerous publications including The New York Times, Art Forum, Village Voice, The Guardian and BBC News. The artist currently lives and works between Paris and Moscow. His works are held in private collections in The State Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg, the S. Freud Museum, Saint-Petersburg and in the collection of Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow.