Yuri Albert. Mami, schau ein Kunstler!

“It can be said that Yuri Albert is one of the most consistent conceptualists among Russian conceptualist artists. He never tires of asking basic yet unanswered questions. What is art? What does it mean today to be an artist? What is it to be a Russian conceptual artist in particular? How is art perceived by the public? In one of his seminal series Albert engages in tongue-in-cheek comparisons between himself and international celebrities: ‘I am not Jasper Johns’, ‘I am not Lichtenstein’, ‘I am not Andy Warhol’. Albert is the author of ‘Paintings for the blind’, done in Braille characters, and the originator of museum tours for blindfolded visitors. He has done monochrome canvases in oil mixed with his own blood, feces, and the ashes of burnt books from his personal library. He has exhibited a series of same-size paintings — lists of realized and unrealized projects written in white against a black background. In 2009 as part of the Third Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art ‘Against Exclusion’, Albert started a special award attributed by a vote of all participants. The terms of award provided that the Moscow Biennial would cover the costs of a laureate’s funeral should he or she die before the next Biennial. Since 2009 Albert has worked as part of the ‘Cupidon Group’ together with Victor Skersis and Andrei Filippov. They seek to recreate collaborative practices that existed among Moscow unofficial artists in the 1970ies and 1980ies — practices of shared intellectual quest and shared merry-making. If one is to believe Albert’s statement that real conceptual art has to be boring, then Albert’s own creations still leave something to be desired”. Irina Kulik