Sven Gundlach counts as a cultic figure in Russia. During the 1980s he was a key member of the underground scene and participated in some influential artistic activities. He is at once a painter, a poet and a musician. As a member of the Mukhomor (Amanitas) underground artist group, one time he was buried live in a box at a park in Moscow. The video of the event shows Gundlach miraculously rising from the ground after almost having suffocated. Besides performance art, he was also interested in rock music, but he made paintings and graphic series as well. His painting The Worker was made at the time of Glasnost and Perestroika, a period when the open criticism and reform of the Socialist regime began, but which was also characterised by transition and value crisis. In a contemporaneous text of his, the artist highlights this definitive atmosphere as the background of his works, the goal of which is to represent self-awareness and the various modes of perceiving reality. Filling out the white surface covering part of the smeared and dripped blotches of paint in the abstract painting is the task of the spectator, in order to provide an up-to-date answer to the question painted beneath the white rectangle: worker, do you wish to dream of your labour?