MOLODKIN CRUDE

Opening at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center the week of President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration, Paris-based, Russian-born Andrei Molodkin’s exhibition CRUDE presents a politically provocative body of work that centers on the doctrine of liberty in contemporary global politics.  

On display will be Molodkin’s series of factory-made acrylic sculptures through which crude oil is pumped via an ironic re-appropriation of technology used by the oil industry at-large, as well as his large-scale canvases executed in ball-point pen. 

At a time when two wars rage on in Iraq and Afghanistan, Molodkin uses hollow acrylic forms  (iconic shapes or words) through which crude oil is pumped to remind us, not only of the cost of those wars, (blood), but also of their motives and origins, (oil), and the greed that consumes the hunt for both.  

CRUDE will be Molodkin’s first exhibition to show in Washington, D.C.—what better a place to introduce him to an American audience and an academic community to better understand the changing role of art in an increasingly polarized political climate?  From Pussy Riot to Ai Weiwei and Malevich’s almost century-old idea of New Art for a New Era, Molodkin takes his place as a creative documentarian of sorts, revealing the art of our now, global era, in minimalism, but with hard, bold strokes.

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Press Mentions 

Andrei Molodkin:  Crude by Matthew Smith, City Paper, DC

Spring Promises to be a Little Dark in Washington's Galleries by Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

Crude expression: artist Andrei Molodkin uses oil to talk back to power by Mark Kelner, The Calvert Journal