POINT PLEASANT PUBLISHING
A monthly spotlight on a notable artist. Start date 2/1/2026.
S H O R E L I N E V O I C E
MASHA LUCH
Masha Luch is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with video, photography, installation, textiles, book arts, and printmaking. With a background in fashion design and motion graphics, Masha has been extensively published by Point Pleasant Publishing, both in the Artist Feature Catalogue and Point Pleasant Journal. Her most recent exhibitions include The House of Smalls Gallery in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, Onboards Biennale / M HKA - Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Kafedra Gallery in Berlin, IMPREINT in London, and PostScriptum Projects in Mišići, Montenegro.
A highly conceptual and ironic artist, Masha Luch uses a variety of methods and disciplines to convey her ideas, such as consistent use of texts, motion graphic videos unfit to scale and sometimes using herself as a model, fiber works which reflect unfiltered truths and reminiscing on concepts of home and place. Masha’s installations and prints are usually created to communicate ironic and absurd humour especially in regard to sexual tension as well as hyper-sensuality. These lustful works, whether conveyed in texts or images, typically depict subtle gradation of tone as well as colorful monochromatic backgrounds sometimes with female figures. As an artist, her fascination with texts, particularly with the lenticular printing technique has had her also build a collection of photographs of ironic texts she has found on clothing throughout her travels and assembled together into a well-crafted graphic book titled Last Price. This investigative approach to visual art is always conceptual in Masha Luch’s art, everything she creates has a witty social commentary on the absurdity, melancholy, and playful nature of contemporary life.
The most interesting recent works by Masha Luch would definitely be her performative motion graphic video works and texts created with lenticular printing. In these videos, scale becomes reduced to an absurd level, such as a bridge walkway being treated like a horizontal escalator into the heavens or Masha Luch filming herself washing and bathing herself with soapy clouds in the sky. Other similarly clever pieces depict Masha’s giant hands playing with suspended telephone lines as if they were an enchanted harp. Such displacement of scale and performative approach reveals an escape of reality using ethereal symbolism with everyday actions. A method of expression which can only be perfectly summarized in these specific video works by Masha. These avant-garde short reels are meant to be impactful and straight to the conceptual point as opposed to portraying an extensive narrative. The dreamy imagery and clean presentation reveals an idealistic realm using contemporary infrastructure against the backdrop of fantastical confrontations best conveyed in these motion graphic videos. In regard to the lenticular prints of texts, the viewer will find two words or opposing phrases which relate to each other but also offer an ionic dichotomy. Such as “love you” and “fuck you”, for example. These phrases depicted with bright luminous monochromatic color and shifting the words through motion reflects intense lust from contemporary infatuation as well as the friction which comes with relationships. Masha often conveys complex conceptual themes just by being selective of her symbolic words.
Bridge (pictured above) depicts a literal bridge to nowhere. Pedestrians depicted as silhouettes traverse a shadowed bridge high up into the clouds. The figures slowly disappear into the clouds as they finally walk across the bridge, then new citizens continue onto the scaffolding. The tiny scale of the figures as well as the bridge against the expansive sky is meant to convey a contemporary fantasy as well as a feeling of powerlessness against the vastness of the universe.
Ranging in themes from conveying the harms of systematic propaganda to uncontrollable passion and lust to absurd or contemplative language to reminiscing on being removed from an initial homeland as well as defining the role of the home, Masha Luch takes complex concepts and turns them into visual substance which has the viewer contemplate philosophically on the complexity of human nature as well as reactions to social constructs. The variety of emotions conveyed in the art from searching for signs to being confronted by sexual behavior accentuated with innuendos to redefining symbolism, the artistry of Masha Luch offers a huge variety of methods of contemplation on a wide scope of themes. With a consistent practice in intelligent investigative execution, the viewer is offered a chance to study the impact of how contemporary symbolism can shape, mold, and transform psychological impulses.
The silkscreen prints typically explore themes such as hypersexuality, domination, innocence, and playfulness with colorful compositions and precise linear forms. Masha often experiments with the use of text in her work through various mediums including printmaking. The texts reveal ironic dichotomies such as pointing out thoughtful contradictions. Her ‘monologue’ series of text incorporates the lenticular printing technique which changes visual perception through optical illusions, changing words on the art depending on where the viewer stands. Masha’s figurative silkprints has the viewer question physical actions and their ironic purpose, such as a woman grasping herself out from a vase instead of flowers or a monochromatic line across a woman’s neck implying a collar and leash.
Conceptually, the works often push boundaries on traditional values as Masha breaks taboos on sexual tension or displays a sense of quirkiness through the depiction of personal objects changing functional form. Clean and crisp, the work often uses pop-art-like qualities, not as a representation of popular media culture, but through a vehicle of presenting her subjects through a puristic essence of form. Such a focus turns attention towards the concept rather than application. The figures depicted in the works have a cartoonish presentation through flat color forms but with a naturalistic and precise outline, conveying a highly stylized standard in a manner similar to ancient Egyptian murals, but with Western standards of anatomical form.
Such integrative methods create holistic new interpretations of familiar subject matter. By arranging florals, fauna, and flowers against diamonds, gems, pearls, snow, and mist, she creates fascinating illusory consumption based on rearranging aesthetically pleasing topics into her very own compositions. The most interesting artists are the ones who can take a subject and transform the meaning, purpose, and visual consumption of the finished surface through integrative techniques such as assemblage, combining different mediums, or constructing handmade props to present a theatrical presentation. Nancy Staub Laughlin achieves all three. Her assemblages leave a presentation of lasting impression through subjects and application of delicate refinement, both literally and symbolically.
Masha Luch provides the viewer with an environment which questions personal as well as societal values and perceptions. Through heightened awareness, she uses figures and personal objects as props to reveal psychological impulses and concepts which instill a sense of bewilderment. A thoroughly provocative, sensual, and mysterious artist, Masha Luch confronts the viewer to question concepts, illusions, and utility. With a solid portfolio and knack for humor, irony, and applying confusion towards her audience, Masha can be described as an avant-garde artist searching for boundaries to bend, push, and break.
The work deals with concepts of sensuality, confusion, and expressing the human body, often with minimalistic or pop art and design qualities. Masha’s silkscreen prints usually contain luminosity but with fixed solid outlines of the subject filled with monochromatic areas defining various forms. There remains a unique elegance to representing human parts to convey concepts or notions. Some of the pieces are playful such as Sunset (pictured below) conveying the human eye as the sun, spraying red light upon the sea while others like On the Hook (top of article) display subtle eroticism with a luminous hand barely touching the top lip of an upside down woman.
Masha’s installation pieces reflect more towards a state of confusion unlike her direct prints. Dream 346 (pictured below) was an installation captured on film of ice molded in the words of "мечта", or “dream” in Russian, the performance lasted 3 hours and 46 minutes as the video captures the icy words slowly melting over the duration. Masha reflects on the state of consciousness, are dreams even real if they leave without a trace...just like the ice? We do not remember most dreams, as they are swiftly forgotten, and are usually not documented. How many instances, deeds, and actions go unnoticed within our lives? Perhaps dreams are just the start of the conversation.
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Another installation work such as 10 Go Back to Start reflects the disarray of losing, or in the process of defeat, as the dice on the floor indicates 10 dots facing up with a board instructing the viewer to start from the beginning. Do we even want to play this game if we start off by losing? The state of confusion the installation imposes on the viewer as if asking “is it worth trying if we begin with failure”.
Direction with the prints remains to the point and undeviating. Masha conveys a message to the viewer about a subject broken down to their purest form communicating through interactions with the body. Take Treatment as an example (pictured below) which displays a tongue protruding out of a bottle of medicine literally drooling the medication onto a ready spoon. As if the medicine tastes as nauseating as the sickness itself or perhaps communicating a sense of desire for the medication, a savoring palette represented through the tongue.
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Contemporary conceptual artists tend to be indirect with the viewer, usually through metaphor or a statement with materials and process. The printmaking methodology suits best for Masha because her direct, simple approach to image-making and conveying a message through symbols, body language, or literal words arrives at an impactful observation.
Masha Luch remains a powerful artist and a thorough communicator who leads us into a journey through our senses, desires, and anxieties. Her varied approach to transmitting elegant, unornamented imagery guides the audience to respect art from an altered perspective of our surroundings. The art accompanies playfulness without being superficial or layered in excess, riveting our senses to conjure upon contemporary paragons.
Previous Shoreline Voice spotlighted artists:
Nancy Staub Laughlin - January 2026
Peter Horvath - December 2025
Haleigh Lennox Brewer - November 2025
Burak Bulut Yildirim - October 2025
Fabio Zanino - September 2025​​
Jaina Cipriano - August 2025
Masha Luch V. 1 - July 2025