Mihkel Ilus “Give up, and leave all behind V”, author’s technique on vireen, 2023, 120×100 cm.

Mihkel Ilusa’s series of paintings speaks of the longing for spring and of being able to remove the cover from a car or a bike, put the clutch down and speed off into the distance.

In this series of paintings, the artist draws a parallel between art and cars, how both worlds share similar universal truths and a striving for the ideal. As an example, he cites a neighbour in the studio, Märdi, who sculpts his old Saab like a sculptor: ‘He might sand the whole car down and re-plaster it just to bring out a centimetre of the side projection on the top of the dust heap’.

With his series of paintings, Mihkel Ilus breaks the myth of himself as a painter in white paint, using a rich palette of colours. The series is bursting with colour, with the same evocative effect. The artist has used automotive colours in his paintings, including Ferrari red, Moskvitch brown and BMW silver grey. As he himself jokingly added: “These works are like failed paintings, every time I try to do a frame it falls out like a nature painting”.

Mihkel Ilus (1987) is an Estonian painter and installation artist who has interwoven performance art and the relationship between the white cube and the black box into his work. Ilus’s work is characterised by a constant will to create and break rules and a manipulation of the medium. A seemingly simple execution is contrasted with a thoughtful and profound concept.