“Love and Motorcycles” – the very name of the exhibit suggests a story of freedom, feelings, and adventures. The motorcycle becomes a stage on which the conflict of a man and a woman unfolds. The project is a certain dedication to the artist’s father. The exhibit was organized by the TSEKH gallery, but, as it cannot receive visitors now for technical reasons, the exposition was staged at a different Kyiv gallery – Art 14. The project received support from the Slovakian Embassy in Ukraine.
“My dad was a motorcycle buff. When I was eight and finishing the second grade, I first rode with him on a Harley,” Mykola Bilous recalls. “Father had all the possible kinds of motorbikes: German WW2-time BMW and Zuendapp, all the Soviet brands, a Hungarian Pannonia, and Czech-made Jawa 300 and Jawa 150. He was in fact a musician who seemed to be able to play any instruments and have absolute pitch – a talent indeed! We traveled a lot, and he instilled the feeling of romanticism and freedom in me when I was still a child. This helps me live, and I’m grateful to father very much.”
Bilous places technique and coloring above the plot. The artist removes black from the main composition, making it the “air.” This creates the effect of theatricality, as if the background is sunk into darkness and the foreground is illuminated. In Bilous’s pictures, the basis tone looks like khaki and is the mixture of three main colors: red, yellow, and blue. The artist puts the open colors in a thin layer, like in calligraphy, and thus achieves certain harmonization in the image.
“My pictures do not distinguish between day and night. I’ve always fought against black, for it is a very strong and sacral ‘catastrophe color.’ Pushing it to the background means cosmos, the tragedy of life, and decorativeness,” Bilous says. The artist formed his creative method long ago, but he goes on improving it and experiments with shades. As a result, “Love and Motorcycles” shows some new hues of blue, red, and green. TSEKH gallery founder Oleksandr Shchelushchenko notes that this has even brought about certain ornamentality in blue.
Freedom is a key element in Bilous’s oeuvre. Obviously, in addition to his father’s influence and practice, the artist’s life experience also matters here. “I was a lot of things! When I am told I’m an artist, I get surprised. I was a stoker, a turner (fourth grade). And when I was a docker, I traveled as far as Anadyr,” Bilous says. “But, as for education, I dreamed of nothing but going to an art school or college. I graduated from the Crimean Samokysh Art School, then from the Kharkiv Art and Industry Institute. In Kharkiv, there was an incredible school, it was so democratic! What is more, I was always lucky about people – I’ve been coming across normal ones all the time.”
Mykola no longer rides a motorcycle, although he does not rule out that one day he will career on a bike again. He says he prefers this transport to the car, for the latter gives you no feeling of head-on wind. The artist shares this feeling by way of his new pictures.
The exhibit “Love and Motorcycles” will remain open until January 15, 2017, at Kyiv’s gallery Art 14.
