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An ex-Soviet soldier and master draftsman, Molodkin started using a simple ballpoint pen – the only medium available to him when serving in the Russian military – to create his first canvases. Referencing tattooing, once illegal in USSR, and exhausting an army of pens, Molodkin’s gigantic, labour-intensive drawings were first in a series of works to critically address iconization in a global contemporary culture (Empire at War, 2006; Ceci n’est pas Carla, 2007).

Crude oil – the ‘black gold’ Molodkin had to deliver in Siberia while in the army – became the core and energy of another body of work; his infamous three-dimensional sculpture pieces. Using religious icons (Jesus, Mohammed) and political slogans (G8, Democracy) as indelible imprints, Molodkin deploys a system of barrels, compressors and piping to pump these hollowed, transparent acrylic blocks half-full with Iraqi or Chechen oil. Here, Molodkin confronts the role of oil as the source of cultural dominance and global communication.

Taking the capitalist system as its subject, Liquid Modernity (Grid and Greed) expands upon this model to bring oil and light together. Das Kapital presents the title of Marx’s seminal text moulded out of transparent acrylic and pumped with Russian crude oil. In a corresponding replica, connected to the latter through pipes, the iconic phrase is erected in neon light. The tension between the two mediums, at once symbolically opposing and materially co-dependent, sets the pulse of the show.

Dominating the gallery floor, Greed presents two imposing grids, referencing the simplicity and austerity of Russian Constructivism. One built in acrylic ‘bleeds’ with oil while the other, connected via a system of compressors and pipes, glows with white light. This light, as born of oil, signals the inception of hope, a spark that lights up the very heart of utopia, ‘life after death’. But the work also points to ‘greed’, to the desire of extract maximum profit from the trade of hydrocarbons.

Molodkin's work presents a stark aesthetic that considers the potential of oil as an icon of hope and despair, life and death, liberator and captor. Molodkin is set to explore these tensions further when he erects a colossal take on the Winged Victory of Samothrace, pumped with crude oil and blood, at the 53rd Venice Biennale.