Alexander Morozov (b. 1974 in Luhansk, UA), is interested in art that outgrows its formal boundaries, becoming philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and even life itself. The artist became famous for the conceptual project Birds’ Flight Records, shown in Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, France, and Germany. The project documented the timing and trajectories of birds flying in the surrounding landscape. Among his prominent projects are The Black Book and Icons series. The first explored the disappearance of cultural memory, recreating artifacts lost during the war. The second focused on paintings with everyday subjects made in the egg tempera technique, characteristic of European art in the 15th–17th centuries.
After 2017, most of his projects have been related to the study of state violence. In the installation at the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale Registration. Between Contemplation and Action, the artist recreated the room of an NKVD worker in the Iset Hotel (a former NKVD hostel).
In 2019, the artist created a sonic installation at the Museum-Apartment of Lev Gumilyov. With the help of sound, Alexander investigated whether we are able to connect to the memory space accumulated in books. In the same year, he created a multi-channel immersive sound installation Railway Opera of sounds and noises in the museum’s Stolypin carriage.
In 2019, for the Akchim. Coordinates project, he became the winner of the Sergey Kuryokhin International Prize in the nomination for the Best Visual Project. The exposition was based on the Akchim dialect, which once existed in the territory of Perm Krai and is now almost lost. A feature of the dialect is a large number of obsolete words, camp jargon, and borrowings from the Komi-Permian language.
In 2020, the artist presented his Station Dystopia installation in the Manege, showing an airship hovering under the ceiling in the form of file boxes. The work is dedicated to the tragic fate of the architect Nikolai Lansere, forced to work for the OGPU and tortured by them.
Presented in the same year at the Garage Museum, the installation Especially Slow Air is dedicated to the Soviet military presence and imperial Soviet colonial policy in Estonia.
He participated in the 11th Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale (2015), the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015), the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015), and the parallel and public programs for Manifesta 10, the European Biennale of Contemporary Art (2014, St. Petersburg).
Nominee of the Artaward International Strabag Prize (Austria, 2013), and the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award (St. Petersburg, 2013). Nominee of the 12th Kandinsky Art Prize in the nomination Project of the Year (2019). Winner of the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award (2018) in the Best Visual Project category. Finalist of the 13th Kandinsky Art Prize in the nomination Project of the Year for the project Station Dystopia (2021). Special Prize of the Anatoly Zverev Prize from PJSC Vysochaishy (2021).
His works are included in the collections of the Copelouzos Family Art Museum (Greece), the State Russian Museum, Perm State Art Gallery, Anatoly Zverev Museum, the Street Art Museum, and the Sergey Kuryokhin Centre for Contemporary Art, Open Museum (Russia), as well as in private collections worldwide.
Alexander Morozov graduated from the St. Petersburg State Repin Academy of Fine Arts in 2002 and completed the Educational Program “Practicum. New Technology in the contemporary art” at ProArte Institute, St. Petersburg in 2000.
Since 2023 the artist lives and works in Paris.