Yuri Masnyj was born in Washington D.C. in 1976. He graduated with a BFA from Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1998, and has taught drawing at Cooper Union since 2007. Masnyj lives and works in New York City.

Masnyj makes drawings, sculptures, and sculptural installations that depict austere architectural spaces populated by a personal iconography of objects and symbols. His recent work is composed as inventories of architectural fragments, everyday objects, and abstract forms. Masnyj is interested ways architectural space, can serve as a stage or platform for human experience, and how that experience can be articulated through the placement and arrangement of objects.

Masnyj's work has been shown throughout the United States and Europe in solo and group exhibitions including "In Practice: Material Deviance" (w. Lauren Bakst), The Sculpture Center, New York 2017; “Name it by Trying to Name It” and “Open Sessions 5,” The Drawing Center, New York, 2015;  “Living Room Index & Pool” (w. Lauren Bakst), Pioneer Works, New York, 2015; “X” (solo exhibition), Travesia Cuatro, Madrid, 2012; “The Night's Still Young” (solo exhibition), Metro Pictures, New York, 2007; “Whitney Biennial 2006,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006, and “Greater New York,” P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, 2005. Masnyj's work was included in Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing published by Phaidon Press. Masnyj’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum in New York, The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu.