Untitled. From the series Popular Science Art

Pertsy—the artistic duo of Oleg Petrenko and Ludmila Skripkina—made their mark on the Moscow art scene in the 1980s. They combined Soviet visuality with the formal language of science, making the hermeneutic void their object of ironic investigation. The artist’ works are easily recognizable by their recurring “tabular” structure and pseudo‑scientific graphics. The usual link between image and meaning is deliberately broken in their practice. Rationality, didacticism, and disciplinarity become targets of artistic dissection, deconstruction, and absurdity.

In this work, the group once again turns to the language of visual propaganda, transforming it into an absurd hybrid of a school display or agitational poster. At the center of the composition is a simplified diagram in the form of a giant yellow arrow with temporal markers: “In 20 minutes,” “In 40 minutes,” “In three days there will be 375 wagons weighing 7,500,000 kg.” What exactly will happen remains unknown. The lower part of the painting features stylized images of railway cars. Counter‑reliefs of canisters, chaotically embedded into the fiberboard—the group’s signature tool—distort the orderliness of the plane and break the illusion of “clarity.” Any attempt at interpretation collapses against the work’s total semantic opacity. As in the duo’s other pieces, the principle of logical rupture operates here: the viewer is offered only the illusion of meaning. The work becomes a critical commentary on the language of late Soviet agitation, where numbers, graphs, and facts existed autonomously, as empty shells detached from reality.