| Painting | 
| Yuri Albert March 31 - April 14, 2004 |
| | Ashes of the burned books, blood, excrements in combination with acrylic paint – these are the materials used by Yuri Albert in his series of the period 2003 – 2004.
All this is not new. With regard to the substances and methods employed in Yuri Albert’s project, this is doubly so. The themes of ashes, blood and feces, the direct use of the first, second and third have occurred in art countless times. Maybe this is the nature of the “final corporeal truth” endless repetition in variations. The framework of “eternal” and “unique” (works of art) includes the genuinely transient that is deprived of all individualization – decay, ashes. But the novelty lies in the posing of the problem, in the humble assertion and absence of drama in the classical theme of “memento mori” expressed by the language combining minimalism and actionism – the two directions that are constantly at odds.
«…If you believe that you are looking at ashes, blood and shit, and not gas-produced ash, madder lake or burnt sienna, that is what you will see, if you do not believe it – then I am powerless to help you. At first I even contemplated exhibiting a video documentation of their creation beside the pictures, but then changed my mind and decided to leave the question of trust open.
And, despite the fact that the blood, and the shit, and the books are perfectly genuine, mine, any unprejudiced viewer could say that I have, once again, created the same – a work about love of art and the different forms of this love – and he shall probably be right, for you can never run away from yourself, or from art».
Yuri Albert
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