Andrei Molodkin was born in Boui, a town North of Moscow, Russia and started drawing using a simple ballpoint pen when he served in the Russian Army, where he worked delivering crude oil in Siberia. Through his work, Molodkin transforms oil from an organic resource into an aesthetic from and raises important questions regarding the role of "black gold", within the contemporary Western culture. He comments on the role of oil as the source of cultural dominance and confronts the significance of a national resource turning into a national identity.
