Natasha Struchkova creatively explores how torrents of information and modern technologies shape the surrounding reality. She often creates pixelated paintings that imitate computer graphics of the 90s or create new worlds from LEGO building blocks.
Capturing what mass media brings us via news broadcasts, computer games and mobile apps, the artist is striving to create something global out of the moment. The LEGO builder becomes a metaphor of the world where all materials and objects have been substituted with generic plastic pieces. Struchkova uses graphic design software to create her sketches: she creates voluminous spatial compositions and chooses angles for display on canvas. By converting kilobytes in her art by using pixels or 3D modelling as a basis for the image, Struchkova captures, according to the artist herself: “a strange state of the matter: it is neither alive nor dead.”
Natasha Struchkova became one of Russia's pioneer web designers. Her first artistic projects at the end of the 90s were linked to the development of digital technologies: the internet and virtual reality programming languages. In 1999-2000, she studied at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow. With a group of other graduates she formed the Summer collective that curated a festival of street performances in 2000-2002.
In 2001, Natasha Struchkova, Maksim Ilyukhin and Mikhail Kosolapov set up the ABC group (Art Business Consulting group). Focussing on office culture and the image of the middle management, group participants created objects, installations, performances, photos and videos, graphic works and paintings. In 2004-2009, the group opened its own exhibition space, Gallery ABC, in Moscow’s Art Strelka cultural centre. In 2010-2012, the Gallery Office welcomed visitors in the ARTPLAY creative cluster in Moscow.
Struchkova's art was exhibited at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Hermitage, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, United Kingdom), the Moscow International Biennial of Contemporary Art and the Pinchuck Art Center in Kyiv.
Her works are found in private collections and the collection of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
Natasha was born in Moscow in 1968.
