Pee Jesus has his work cut out for him.
One of the Russian representatives at this year's Venice Biennale, Andrei Molodkin, is cooking corpses into crude oil. Although his previous works have included oil and blood (above is his piece in the Russian Pavilion), but he and I both, apparently, agree that blood is so nineties. Molodkin's new macabre technique begins by burning the body until it produces a yellow resin. He then pores the liquid into an acrylic mold of the deceased choosing. A BBC journalist, a porn actress, and a New Yorker suffering from AIDS are among the first eager patrons to have signed up for this novel postmortem arrangement. The journalist wants to be poured into a brain, the porn star - praying hands, and the last - a sex toy, so that he can, even in death, (to put it subtlely) 'please' people. Mali Ilse Paquin cites Molodkin's new project up there with Serano's Piss Christ(1987), Schneeman's seminally intimate scroll performance(1975), and Quinn's blood portrait(1991). Noting however, that the art community is usually a bit more open-minded when it comes to pushing the boundaries of body taboos. The only questions that remain: what will Molodkin want to be poured in, but perhaps more importantly - who will do it?




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