Series «Red Balls»

Our memories often play with us: we can forget the main characters but do remember some details which by their brightness and discomfort of existence take all our attention. These details or objects have much more impact on us than the direct actors of the situation. Ivan Plusch speaks in his series of works in such shift: red balls are the sacred objects appearing to be in the middle between the dead and alive wolds (if for example to remind about the Quetzalkoatl legend from Akado-Shumerian mythology, where the ball game was sacred act) and the ordinary memories from the Soviet past when these toys were always colored in red. Red color is the color of blood with war and aggression symbolism and the symbol of generation heritage, heredity, family affiliation.

The red walls are inside of the landscape with house: it has the symbol of nest, which we have for coming back in our life, the place we like to remember, save in our memory. There is only one problem: this landscape is done by Ivan Plusch in mechanical way, with strict lines and repeating patterns and reminds us the theater backstage inappropriate for life and identity. The heroes of the painting are flowing away. Flowing is the mechanical process but alive at the same time with the symbol of time and memory. The time flow, oblivion, house as a decoration turn the characters of the painting into ghosts and only red balls look real and actual.

There is no heroes, only action plays but it has been tuned into the scenery. Red balls as the memory of lost child game are spread around the painting and looks like destroyed genetic code of our blood which might be collected soon again.