Dimitri Ozerkov
The development of our inner and outer worlds is often advanced by fantasies and images. The realm of dreams can shield and even save us from the perils of reality. However, this seemingly harmless escapism does have a flaw – when a dream intrudes on reality like a terrorist suicide-attacker and annihilates the prevailing system of values, and fills our fragile consciousness, violating its boundaries. Is it good or evil?
Creating a situation in which an illusion intervenes in reality, the artist ponders over its inconsistency using visual images, the allegorical and multi-layered nature of which elude perception, as does the definition of a dream. Consciousness, balancing on shades of grey, devoid of a straightforward scenario, – is the story of life, in which the concepts of beauty and ugliness, eternity and transience, truth and falsehood, life and death are vague and mixed up.
As usual, existential maxims are expressed by Ivan Plusch through the art of painting. His art is devoted to the passing of time. However, he does not make videos – for it is impossible to shoot an endless film. A film requires heroes, plots, metaphors and integral imagery. That is why Plusch prefers canvases and 3-D installations, media more abstract and traditional for the 20th century, to convey genuine pictures of life. He creates them as artefacts that portray the traces of life. As far as reason, memory and conscience allow him, Plusch shows the dynamics of life, devoid of the social element, as an evolutionary process. According to him, art today is incapable of surviving collisions with the existential essence of being. Once in the field of Art, everything superficial crumbles to the floor in a pile of ash. Like other artists who have addressed the theme of Time, Plusch blends personal and historical time. His characters live counter to historical time, however, when looked at retrospectively, they nevertheless remain part of it. Plusch seeks to identify and get in tune with a rhythm that runs counter to “the course of history”, and to find a way to express it artistically.
“The No-Character Play. Thesis 52” is an installation created for a cell in the Wittenberg prison. A strange black unidentifiable form or mass, a dense substance or a solidified cloud, pours through the window, dominating the space. What happened to the people who were in this room before? Are they alive or dead, were they saved? This ordinary room, where someone would work or just spend time, bears no signs of a sudden escape. The furniture is intact. The subtle fading of the colours conveys the passage of time. The black substance makes visitors somewhat uneasy, as if they have taken someone else’s place, having become the characters in an absurd play with unclear roles and an unfinished plot.
