Untitled. From the series Popular Science Art

Pertsy—the artistic duo of Oleg Petrenko and Ludmila Skripkina—first appeared in Moscow’s unofficial art scene in the 1980s. They quickly integrated into the circle of the younger generation of conceptualists, developing an original artistic language. Inclined toward “total aesthetic gestures” and viewing everyday life as a Baudrillardian hyperreality, the duo in many ways inherited the traditions of OBERIU and Dada, transforming the artistic act into a form of logical paradox. Their works were built as fictitious constructions in which meaning was intentionally blocked or replaced by a simulacrum and interpretation became a trap: the apparent order—represented by tables, captions, and diagrams—only exposed structural emptiness. The group’s artistic gesture was meant to destroy the expectation that art should necessarily “say something.”

In this work, a square of window putty with a counter‑relief of a canister is mounted on a rusted piece of embossed iron. The surface of the container is covered with a pseudo‑scientific table filled with formulas, symbols, and designations of elementary particles (for example, νₑ, π⁰, μ⁺). The visual language evokes the aesthetics of laboratory samples—material carriers of knowledge. Yet the semantics are destroyed: the table cannot be read, and scientific precision is replaced by decorative mimicry. The canister acts as a symbol of alienness and absurdity. Rust, worn materials, and rough textures enhance the impression of a post‑apocalyptic document; an artifact of a vanished era where science, power, and language merged into a single form.