Masha Luch V. 3

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.

https://mashaluch.com