Ruins of a watchtower near Izborsk

During the second half of the twentieth century, Plavinsky rose from artist upstart to one of the leaders and founders of the Nonconformist movement in Moscow, his oeuvre encompassing a range of media, including wood and clay models, etchings and oil paintings. The artist himself described his artwork as adhering to his definition of 'Structured symbolism', which sought to dissect the images and ideology of modern civilisation and combine them in new configurations across the boundaries of time: the past, the present and the future. Owing to the controversial nature of his art, he was not allowed to join the Moscow Union of Arts - as such he was unable to sell art, operate in a studio and purchase art supplies up until 1978, and as a result he often utilised non-traditional artistic material in his compositions owing to the restrictions imposed on him and the scarcity of available goods in the USSR.
Within his œuvre, Plavinsky constantly explored two perceptions of time - that which he regarded as 'natural' and 'unnatural'. Unnatural time refers to the calendar time that has been constructed by humanity and to which our lifestyle and society abides to, clearly displayed by the millions of technological apparati that surround us and sorted into seconds, minutes and other increments of time. Natural time, however, relates to a broader sense of the concept, a vaguer, more fluid and essential order of time, one before the evolution of homo sapiens, where the Earth is dominated by primeval creatures, fish, lizards, turtles and bats which pre-existed us and will ultimately outlive us. Vikings Ship (1976) and Abandoned Church (1975) portray the eroded, weathered ruins of human civilisation and construction and subsequently suggest the fragility of our material culture against the steady, corrosive advancement of time. Plavinsky’s use of black and white in his oeuvre lays bare the waste and decay of life, and meditates on one’s own mortality and obsolescence.
Additionally, ancient and extinct cultures also play a central role in Plavinsky's oeuvre, the artist having studied the symbols of Old Church Slavonic, as evidenced in Scroll (1969) and Shroud of Christ (1968), as well as Medieval Christian and tools and writings from the Far East. Once more, he explores lost societies and religions to depict the transitory nature of time which reduces us to dust and oblivion and the hopelessness and senselessness of human memory, which resonates particularly strongly in a nation where the political system claims to be both everlasting and sought the radical and overtly ideological redefinition of its history. Unsurprisingly, Plavinsky's conception of history and retrospectivity contradicted the official mandate presented by the authorities and his subversive art led to him being banned from practicing as an artist in Moscow.
While Plavinsky's work often displays the hopeless, repetitive endeavours of humankind to maintain and assert their existence, it is ironic that the artist's output ultimately forms part of that endeavour by recording the futility of human activity and the destruction wrought by nature, as it immortalises humankind's emotive response to its surroundings, and contributes to our sense of remembrance, culture and consciousness.