Mar 14

Masha Luch

Masha Luch is a printmaker, video and installation artist who has exhibited across Europe and has been featured in publications such as VerbumPress and TATLIN Publishing House. She started her career in fashion after obtaining her Masters degree, until delving into motion graphics and work as an art director, then eventually evolving into a contemporary visual artist. Masha's artworks are in private collections in Armenia, Russia, Serbia, the United States, and Finland.

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.

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.

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’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.

Another installation work such as 10 Go Back to Start (pictured below) 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”.

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.