Pat Kikut looks out from the window and all he sees is empty American landscapes.

It almost seems heretical to claim that the tradition of the Estonian landscape painting is thin. Immediately could be lined up Konrad Mägi and Uno Roosvald, Aleksander Vardi and Peeter Mudist, Richard Uutmaa and Toomas Vint, could be spoken about colours and forms, soil samples and being in the womb of earth. This all remains valid, but still here and there can be detected thinner areas, underneath which is emptyness. One of such blanks in the Estonian landscape painting is certainly the genre of road-painting, which deals with the so-called highway-ethics, using the angle of those, sitting in a car and interpreting into a landscape everything in their vision area.

In the USA undoubtedly the soil is more favourable for emerging of such genre, starting already from the most essential factor: the existence of highways. They cover the whole country or at least different states, taking the passengers to hours lasting trips. While covering certain routes repeatedly – and such continuous travelling is also in the experience of Patrick Kikut – it is not anymore a tourist’s vision, who mostly senses strange landscapes only through the car window. Everything remaining in the vision area forms for him the general impression of the character of a country. But as it is said: Kikut is not a tourist, he lives here.

The 50. highway is another road in the States, which has been made special by its nickname: the loneliest highway in America. It is surrounded by deserts, wastelands and the prairie – generally, nothing visually attracting or exciting, everywhere is only boring sand and empty land. Kikut does not try to draw a bunny out of a hat, as it isn’t there: his paintings do not make the landscapes more friendly, sexy, swallowable, tourist-orientated. This is an honest look at the USA, where can be detected no visual decorating, artistic processing.

Works by Kikut become important in the first range through two aspects: as being series of works and bringing of the rear mirror into the picture room. Kikut’s small-sized oil paintings would undoubtedly work also as separate pieces, but as series on a gallery wall they form a changeful film-like story. Desert shots are followed by cliff views and vice versa, leaving the viewer, walking in the gallery, an impression of constant moving, driving forward, continuous changing of eternally emerging shots. By the rear mirror the author also stresses the impression of movement, the impression of the fact that we are not dealing with separate landscapes, but sights, following each other in front of the eyes of  those behind the steering wheel.

Undoubtedly the seemingly “cold” series is extremely romantic, even melancholic. Already the title of the exhibition does not let us go from the key words “lonely”, “being on the road continuously”, “melancholy”. As a series the paintings by Kikut tell us about moving on and emptyness, grazing so the beatnics (let’s remember the classics: Jack Kerouac’s “On the road”) and all possible road-movies, which together form a zen-study of the perception of emptyness, value of moving forward and eternity of being on the road. It happens so, when a landscape painting comes into contact with an obdurated driver.