Andrei Molodkin
Liquid Modernity

Andrei Molodkin is a Russian artist who uses crude oil in his artworks to deconstruct the economic realities of geopolitical praxis. He focuses on the Global Relations using oil and blood as a money.

Liquid Modernity is Molodkin’s second catalogue. The eponym exhibition is a large-scale installation, featuring two cage-like structures made from acrylic tubing. In one cage, fluorescent lights are placed, while in the other, crude oil is pumped through the tubes, creating a generator that powers the lights in the other. The work was first displayed at Orel Art in London in 2009, and its title, Liquid Modernity: Grid and Greed, reflects the importance of oil in the world economy and modern life. Molodkin's work explores the natural properties of oil, which have become a global symbol of power and is often used as a bargaining tool by one country with another. The installation uses REBCO (Russian Export Blend Crude Oil) as the subject, highlighting Russia's association with the darkest type of oil.

The cages also resemble defendant's cages in Russian courtrooms, referencing the trials of Russian oligarchs and their wealth related to the oil trade. The oil used in Liquid Modernity does not need to be Russian, but could be Libyan, Iraqi, or Iranian, each with a specific message about the country's relationship with the west through the production and exportation of oil. The installation's grid-like structures are a formal link with the use of the grid in the history of art, particularly Russian modernism.

Liquid Modernity installation is now part of the Tate Modern Gallery Collection.