ANDREI MOLODKIN

The russian artist, Andreï Molodkin has developed a technique to cook human bodies until they become crude oil. With a pressure cooker the artist plans on heating cadavres in industrial ovens for a couple of months until they produce a yellow resin. This substance will then be poured into an acrylic cast chosen by the deads. The artist invites people to donate their corpses, arguing that he gives them a piece of paradise; "Like dinosaurs, after million of years our bodies will become oil that will then burn in a car or a motor of some sort. In other words, in hell. I propose to transform corpses in oil that will be exposed in a museum. Which means people will be in paradise since their oil will never burn."

Three people already agreed for the artist to take their body. The BBC journalist, Sasha Gankin, wishes for his body oil to  be poured in a casted brain. Chloë des Lysses, pornstar, wants to come back as a a pair of hands in prayer. And a New Yorker that has AIDS says he wants his oil to be in a casted penis that could serve as a sexual toy, his dream being of making people come after his death. (source :La Presse)

Andreï Molodkin has been using crude oil (not from human bodies) to create art for many years now. In Sweet crude Eternity, an exhibit he did in 2006, this is what the BBC news reports :

"Many of the exhibits are created using plastic to create hollow moulds which are then filled with crude oil. They include sculptures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, internal human organs, and words such as "Democracy" all containing oil. Although he uses oil from many places in his work, much of that used in his Sweet Crude Eternity exhibition comes from Iraq and Iran - which he termed "Islamic" oil.

"Oil is like a global language of our world," Molodkin told BBC World Service's The Ticket programme. A country can communicate with another just through energy or a resource.

Life after death

The artist, who splits his time between Paris and Moscow, said he was inspired to create works with oil when he worked on a train which transported missiles through Siberia. As it was not possible to find coal, the train was instead run on oil - which made the soldiers working on it very dirty.
"When we came out from the train to ask villagers for food or water, they saw how dirty we were and they gave us so much food," Molodkin explained. "It was like exchanging oil for the food."

Molodkin's exhibition, Sweet Crude Eternity, expresses certain political viewpoints, detailing the US White House filled with oil, and soldiers with their hands pressed together in prayer. But he also insisted that there was a more positive message he wanted to give through his art. For example, he said one exhibit - a Christ figure with oil bleeding out of his wounds - "proves life after death in the eyes of the spectator."This is because the oil that seeps out of the wounds is transformed to diesel, which can then be used as fuel. "Oil is an organic material - every organic thing on our planet will be oil in future," Molodkin added.
"It's like life after death."

Russia fields

He also explained that was a financial aspect to creating art this way. "I take Iraqi crude oil - thought of as a dangerous Islamic oil - and I fill it in the form of Jesus," he said."By doing this, I can sell the oil at a cost 10,000 times more expensive. And I show how oil is transformed in it."

Meanwhile, Molodkin detailed his latest project - a recently completed trip to Russia's oilfields. He spent two weeks taking photos of the geology of the areas where the oil is extracted. "I saw how they dig oil, how they press oil, and in the cold it's so difficult to do it, and such an expensive process," he said. "It's not like Iran or Iraq - where they dig oil and it comes up very easily." (BBC NEWS)

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