Russian's deadly serious body art

A leading contemporary Russian artist says he has perfected a technique to boil human corpses into crude oil from which he will create permanent sculptures, and he has already signed up willing volunteers.

Andrei Molodkin, who will represent Russia at this year's Venice Biennale, claims that after spending three to six months in a high-pressure machine, a corpse becomes oil that can be used to power cars or be moulded into a permanent memorial statue to sit on the mantelpiece.

Paris-based Molodkin, 43, has already signed up BBC reporter Sasha Gankin, who wants to be rendered into a sculpture of a brain, as well as a French porn star, Chloe des Lysses, who wants to be turned into a model of praying hands. Conscious he may have to wait several decades before putting these plans into action, Molodkin has also signed up some HIV sufferers in New York, whom he expects to die "in one or two years".

The artist says the machine acts like a pressure cooker as it applies heat to a corpse, turning it into "yellowish, sweet crude". This can be turned into petrol or gas, or poured into a transparent mould to become an "oil sculpture". He has already tested the machine with a dog.

Molodkin, a former Soviet soldier, adds that the machine he will use will produce between 1.5 and 2.5 litres of oil. He is already known for his so-called "liquid sculptures" of oil and light and will exhibit in London for the first time between April and June before going to Venice.

Much of his work is inspired by oil because he had to deliver it while serving in Siberia as a soldier.

His work is the ultimate extension of a growing trend for artists to use human bodies as art materials. Sculptor Marc Quinn made a study of his head from his frozen blood; Gilbert and George regularly use bodily fluids in their art, and Gnther von Hagens's Body Worlds exhibition of preserved corpses is on at London's O2.

Last year German artist Gregor Schneider advertised for someone who would be willing to die in an art gallery, and the Wellcome Trust displayed portraits of people pictured shortly before and after death.

- INDEPENDENT