Last oil barrel is a pocket-piece sized artwork. The piece refers to the implementation of fossil fuels’ structural models and their global consequences. It promotes the uncertainty implied by its title: Can we imagine the circumstances in which a last oil barrel would exist? Will our global, oil-based culture come to an end? Will it be the end of oil culture or of humanity, as we know it? Among the parts that make up this hybrid work (object-performance), there is an invitation to consult its price, fixed to the financial markets and specifically to the NYMEX oil futures index. Consequently, the nominal price of this multiple-work has fluctuated between $166.32, the historical record per oil barrel in 2008, and -$37.63, its negative record, reached on April 20th, 2020 during the disappearance of oil demand in the financial markets due to the pandemic. (Over the duration of Petromelancholia it fell from close to $90.00 to a little more than $70.00.)

Born in 1972, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck graduated in Fine Arts in Caracas, Venezuela, where he extensively exhibited his work. Since the 1990s, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck has developed a hybrid practice that incorporates many mediums. He draws from the processes of curators, historians, and archivists to create narratives from scavenged materials, found archives, and the works of others. His projects have included sculptural objects, films, collages, conceptual installations, and — in the case of some of his best-known work — digitally created photographs made with a faulty scanner. Sometimes his works take the form of provocative cultural and political statements, which he refers to as narrative “entanglements”. Balteo-Yazbeck’s work questions notions of authorship, art historical study, cultural authority, and the dynamics of power in history and contemporary society.