In the Gallery, the artist creates an integral, though fragmented, narrative about the permanent and unstable nature of this deformation. His strange pseudo-corporeal images emerge from the corners of ordinary rooms, appear in the lit openings of angular passages that are decorated with framed illustrations, “pictures within pictures”. It seems that these are just shadows of characters, casts of their souls, blurred remnants of individualities who were once true personalities. Or do we perhaps have before us a kind of macabre pupation of the souls of the future, but aspiring to enter the realm of life, and they are on the verge of leaving their polygonal cardboard closets with cosy wallpaper that speaks of the ease of an outwardly carefree life and modest comfort? “Pictures within pictures” seem to promise a clue, but require additional research, and so the answer is not found.

Inside the rooms, strange characters turn into their own reflections over and over again, into symbols compressed to the utmost. This compression reveals their essence, practically turns their outlines into signs which, in their turn, require interpretation. “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” – these strange monsters seem to be exclaiming. “A strange white bird represents the futility of words” – one wishes to cite Gauguin in the hope of giving at least some meaning to these images-shadows. “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know, and you will see the way to fly”, shouts the seagull Jonathan Livingston from another extreme of time, vanishing into the sky. External energy has changed our bodies and continues doing so. These changes eventually oust them from their cosy world and then instantly return them to it, endowed with the same old anxiety.

In Peter Greenaway’s short film “Inside Rooms”, the banality of the characters, shown in the bathrooms of their apartments, – is encapsulated in the most intimate place where, alone with their loved ones, they can wash off their masks and restore the harmony of body and soul. On the other hand, in Plusch’s new series of works the inside rooms are anti-bourgeois, transitory and hopeless. Even here, in the intimate corners of their abodes, his characters cannot find peace, cannot stop their inner turmoil. The outside world catches them off guard even in hide-outs, watches from every corner, puts pressure on them from the wallpaper pattern, is seen in a picture that is hanging slightly crookedly. Everywhere, like an epidemic, they are caught up by civilisation. Its technologies of reproduction guarantee them corporeal immortality, but behind it lies the dismal cliché of the exist[1]ence of souls.

How can pressure from the outside world be avoided? Should you reassess yourself, revise your ideals that are imposed on you imperceptibly and against your will? Is it reasonable to redistribute energy, reducing its consumption by eliminating all unnecessary things from your life? And being con[1]sistent, choose the way to behave in relation to life situations that we face? It seems that the solution is to make a meaningful inner choice, which will always be more reasonable than what was taught by parents, teachers and older friends. But will a change in our perception of life make it possible to cor[1]rect our image that is always eroded by time? Or is it, perhaps, that the image is not important at all?

As Don Juan advised, you can either submit to life (either by adapting to its demands, or by fight[1]ing them), or organise your life in accordance with your own plans and attitudes. The life process as a consequence of the action of biological forces is fundamentally different from life as an activity aimed at acquiring knowledge. Only the awareness of the process of life makes it possible to gain sufficient energy for achieving the results of each choice made and of life as a whole. Plusch’s characters know nothing of such advice. Crushed by civilisation, the demons of the inside rooms only raise the same questions endlessly. And it is no longer clear whether the rooms keep the ghosts locked up, or whether these colourful spaces themselves are the creation of the clouded consciousness of the characters abiding in them.

Being prisoners of passing time that Plusch is always trying to capture in his canvases, his characters stay in a limited space for a long period, which they increasingly begin to perceive as being internal, personal. Like Bendicion Alvarado, they are in a slow and permanent state of dying, turning into a soggy mass, buried in the locked rooms of a dictator. And then suddenly revived again, they once more see no way out and go back into themselves. Constantly peering at the walls around, they see their reflections and shadows, and feel the weight of their bodies imprisoned in the chambers of their own lives. They are victims of someone else’s ideals, and the catastrophes of someone else’s aspirations. They hoped that achieving comfort and happiness would be the key to inner satisfaction, but the survival of the body only prolongs the torment of the soul, and there will be no way out. Thus, are secret missions revealed, manifesting them selves in debauched outbursts, in an explosion of violence, in cruel perversions. There is no end to them, like in Pasolini’s “120 Days of Sodom”, but all this is kept to the last in the inside rooms of their souls that, to the very end, are trying to save themselves from all-consuming chaos.