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Alexander Brodsky - Coma (2000)
This Russian visual artist and architect made this work in the aftermath of the Chechen war that was as dishonourable and insidious as the war in Ukraine. The city meticulously built was gradually filled with oil and by the end of the exhibition drowned in it completely. He showed what the Putin's government holds dearest instead of the wellbeing of his citizens. I saw this work in my home town Perm in 2008, the year I left to Europe. At that time Perm was the centre of art "renaissance" in Russia. It is not any more and will never be.
Andrei Molodkin - Le Rouge et le Noir (2009)
The other Russian artist who reflected on the war in Chechnya and the Russian military frenzy and greed. This work participated in the Venice Biennalle in 2009. It is a replica of a statue of Nike, the goddes of victory. It is filled with a blood of a Russian solder, of a Chechen solder, and Chechen oil being mixed by a pump system.
Andrei Molodkin - Putin Filled with Ukrainian Blood (2022)
In March 2022 he installed the portrait of Putin filled with Ukrainian blood in one of the central London churches.
Roni Horn - Opposite of White V.2 (2006)
There are some oil-production companies and oil-refineries in the Ural Mountains where I come from. This is exactly what I saw when I had a chance to visit one of them once. It felt like a massive black void, the black hole on Earth. Roni Horn made the artwork out of glass but it transports me back to that moment in the Urals and to the understanding what oil and other resources mean in the history of my country.
Richard Wilson - 20:50 (1987)
Another master that worked with oil and created a perfect representation of the modern world. We live surrounded by it and the energy it gives without even noticing it. Richard Wilson brought this concept from the figurative level to the literal level covering the whole room with the thin layer of oil.
