Plan 3a. 168x129 cm , canvas/acrylic , 2014

The no Character Play

Ivan Plusch traditionally uses the art of painting to express existential maxims. His art is about the flow of time, though he doesn't use video – you can't shoot, after all, an endless film. Films require characters, plots, metaphors and generalizing images. Thus, Plusch prefers more abstract and more traditional for the 20th century mediums for the conveying of authentic pictures of objective reality – canvases and spatial installations. He creates them in the form of artifacts, identifying the tracks and traces of vital processes. To the extent allowed by reason, memory and conscience, Plusch captures the dynamics of life, cleansed of their social element, as an evolutionary process.

In his view, modern art is incapable of withstanding a confrontation with the existential essence of being. Coming into the field of art, anything superficial crumbles to the floor in a heap of ashes. Like other artists addressing the theme of time, Plusch imperceptibly merges personal time and historic time. His characters live counter to historic time, though viewed retrospectively they are part of it all the same. Plusch attempts to capture and identify the rhythm that runs counter to "the course of history." And to find a way of expressing it artistically.

Dmitry Ozerkov