Throughout history humble materials have been transformed into stunning works of art. Barrels and tin cans are a form that has appeared in contemporary art time and time again. Artists such as Piero Manzoni, Andy Warhol, Thomas Hirschhorn and Art collective Kyzyl Tractor found these objects on store shelves, in garbage cans or at warehouses for the production of barrels for storing petroleum products. As a result of marketing, we recognise these forms at once. Our eye quickly and accurately determines their functionality.  Nonetheless, the context in which they are placed is intrinsic to our understanding of the object. It is true that, perhaps, the appearance of these objects in the field of art can be outlined under the tag of the artists’s thoughts on production (artistic, economic, overproduction).  Sculptures by Gregory Orekhov appear against the background of a stereotypical Russian landscape - a field with a forest belt. The installation is untitled. The object  — a standard 208 litre or 55 gallon barrel — is used to transport liquid and bulk materials, including hazardous substances, such as radioactive waste, while Orekhov replaces such with haystacks. Here the artist signifies that ecology should not be upstaged by the economy. However, there is an obvious correlation between the two, which is yet for the artist to identify: natural resources and their exchange value, the price of bread and its dependence on oil, and so on. 

If Orekhov’s “tin could speak,”  it would talk about Russia 2020. About Norilsk and Kamchatka, as well as the situation in our country which lives on the dependency of the extraction of natural resources, producing basically nothing. An exact copy of a mirror polished stainless steel barrel is specially created by the artist; similar to the works of his predecessors, it is about production, although, unlike Hirshhorn’s ‘Too Too Much Much’ it is about what is “too little” in Russia.