Thomias Radin Dream to deep, 2025

Dream to deep is a star shaped painting executed in oil and spray-paint on hand-carved wood.

The onlooker is drawn into a vortex of feathery clouds that could, just as well, be foamy waves. In the vortex’s centre the artist carved, thinly lined with bright gold, a head spun around its own axis, janus face multiplied and caught inside a tornado-like swirl.

The painting is part of a group of works by Radin taking inspiration from the legend of Icarus. While playing with the motif of Icarus’s free fall, the work wittily performs an ambivalent gesture. While the background could be either sky or sea, the foreground appears to depict a street limned by skyscrapers and trees––or their reflection in the water’s surface. Icarus, in other words, is either in the midst of falling or has drowned already, the onlooker either witnesses his scream or its afterimage. Dream to deep gives form to delicate tension, is caught between anticipation and spectrality.

Throughout Radin's work, postcolonial themes are central, as one sees in this painting. A similar star-shaped work was first exhibited at Kindl Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin (Poly. A Fluid Show, 2023), where it symbolized something akin to a guiding star that led viewers into the group exhibition.