VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Station Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibition Andrei Molodkin: Crude. Opening Saturday, November 5th, 2011 @ 7pm, and FEATURING THE MUSIC OF MARIACHI LAS CORONELAS DE VANESSA DEL FIERRO. Exhibition will be on view through February 12, 2012.

There are no obvious routes of escape, no happy endings on offer. - Morning Star.  For the first time in the history of Houston, Station Museum of Contemporary Art will host an art exhibition that explores oil, the viscous black gold pumping through the heart of the city’s economy. On November 5th, 2011 the Russian born artist Andrei Molodkin will open CRUDE.

Since the discovery of Spindletop oil field in 1901, Texas has witnessed an extraordinary surge in petroleum production that revolutionized American industry, surpassing even that of the previously unrivalled Russian Empire. With Russia now in its post-Communist era, the ex-Soviet soldier will reveal the social, political and economic trajectories at the core of every capitalist society.

Culture is an emptiness we have to fill and affirm with economics. It turns out there is no art, no culture, nothing but economics. - A. Molodkin

The goal of Station Museum is ‘to encourage the public’s awareness of the cultural, political, economic, and personal dimensions of art.’ Pushing this to its limits, Molodkin will exhibit the most demanding and forthright of his recent work. On display will be intoxicating sculptures made from transparent acrylic blocks and hollowed into negative spaces. DEMOCRACY, JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS; are examples of utopian words previously requisitioned by Molodkin, all oozing with the noxious, black matter. Canvases created from vast quantities of biro pens will feature frenzied manifestations of the artist’s deepest frustrations.

Dualism is at play, as the viewer is at once faced with the juxtapositions of life and death, need and desire, opportunity and greed.

He’s tackling something so real, so blatant and so obvious that it needs no metaphorical description to bring its un- niceties to our attention. – Art Review

Andrei Molodkin is known internationally for his socio-political projects. At the 53rd Venice Biennale, the artist exhibited his installation Le Rouge et le Noir in the Russian pavilion. Chechen oil and the blood from wounded soldiers pumped through two replicas of the Louvre’s Nike of Samothrace; paradoxically Gazprom, one of the largest energy companies in the world, sponsored the pavilion.

Maybe I also will be corrupted by oil. Everyone who works with oil begins to be corrupted by its power. – A. Molodkin

Andrei Molodkin was born 1966 in Boui, North Russia and graduated from the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design at Stroganov Institute, Moscow in 1992. Whilst studying he also served in the Soviet Army, convoying missiles through Siberia. In the freezing temperatures, Molodkin would rub oil over his body to provide the warmth to keep himself alive. Oil became his source of survival, yet he was always acutely aware of the corruption and exploitation embedded in its very substance. Throughout Molodkin’s remarkable career, he continues to explore the connotations of oil in a myriad of high-profile socio-political contexts.

"All my work is political. Russian contemporary art is lost in translation and that is why my art is direct, like that of the Avant-Garde. Unmasking is an ambition of the Avant-Garde and the Avant- Garde is something new that arises from the decomposing old. From the oldest of the oldest oil."
- Andrei Molodkin