The Briefest History of Labor Originals for sale

15-minute break — a group show on labour and leisure was conceived back in the pre-pandemic era, and here I tackled somewhat more theoretical matters related to the field of work. I merged a recent reading which impressed me — How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet and the classic The Abolition of Work by Bob Black — a piece that I read back in my student years and which greatly influenced my thinking on these matters. F.W. Paps, a character regularly appearing in my work is depicted here having a phantasmagorical vision during his midsummer nap: the whole history of work, from the first activities of organised agriculture to AI-supervised digital monotony, self-harvesting fields and flagellar motors performing their own highly efficient collective labour.

This piece was originally drawn with ink and watercolours on paper, scanned and later printed large-scale on gabardine cloth with final dimensions of 3,5 by 15 meters. It was installed alongside a wooden sculptural composition from the collection of the All-Russian Decorative Art Museum, which hosted 15-minute break. The exhibition later travelled to Nizhniy Novgorod's National Centre for Contemporary Arts.

Techniques

Inspiration

Bob Black, labor studies, naps, «Work: A Deep History From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots»