Untitled. From the series Popular Science Art

Pertsy—the artistic duo of Oleg Petrenko and Ludmila Skripkina—emerged on the Moscow art scene in the 1980s. In 1987, they moved into the famous squat on Furmanny Lane, one of the key hubs of unofficial perestroika‑era art. It was at this time that their artistic language took final shape: didactic tables and diagrams from academic journals and textbooks—operating as signs of “scientific authenticity” that had lost their meaning and turned into empty shells—came to occupy a central place in the artists’ practice.

By combining graphic illustration, textual fragments, and relief inserts, the duo created a visual hybrid of a scientific diagram and an informational display. The semantic focal point is an image of a birch tree, beneath which are six blue buckets. The inscription reads “60 liters,” yet the viewer cannot tell what is being measured—rainfall, birch sap or work output. Nearby is a fragmentary text stylized as academic language, impossible to read as a coherent statement. The surface of the work incorporates counter‑reliefs of canisters impressed mechanically into the fiberboard. Their alien and chaotic placement generates a sense of anxiety, as if otherworldly forms are trying to break into the conditional order of scientific “visual clarity.” The work ironizes the logic of agitprop and refers to the late Soviet experience in which the language of scientific “objectivity” had become a dead shell—a form devoid of content.