I Am Everywhere

Michail Michailov, so little

At first glance, there is nothing. At least so little that the eye is immediately summoned to scrutinize the sheet of paper on which he thinks he sees only fine dust or grease stains. On closer inspection, he quickly takes the measure of a form of trompe-l'oeil, to finally dig even further and discover how the artist competes with reality with the help of simple black and colored pencils. Thwarts all perception of it and turns it over to the order of a pretense.

However, Michail Michailov's art is not content with being required by illusion, however perfect it may be; he is especially so by this feeling of vertigo which his work instills in the test of emptiness. The more so as the immaculate sheet of paper on which he applies himself to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, the insignificance of these small dirt paradoxically appears even more empty with the drawing.

From the latter's relation to the imprint, it is no longer time to gloss. Everything was said. But the organic character of the subject itself, which the artist grasps, gives each of his sheets a lively and sensitive charge that refers to the body. Its presence is never expressed better than through the notion of trace, starting from the idea of dirt, if not of humor. Michail Michailov's drawings present all kinds of signs that determine strange microcosms, on edge.

Philippe Piguet