Thomias Radin US ICARUS – A Kinetic Poem, 2025

The short film US ICARUS is based on a painting with the same title produced for Thomias Radin’s first exhibition with the gallery.

Aiming to deconstruct the relationship between Icarus and his father, Daedalus, the film portrays a single character that simultaneously embodies father and son. Filmed dancing unnervingly slowly, Radin’s choreography conflates meditation and madness.

The work draws on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus who fell from the sky and drowned in the ocean after flying too close to the sun. Radin restaged the myth’s turbulent sea and burning horizon in the cinematographic stillness granted by shots reduced to back and white, deprived of the palette bearing his painterly practice. While the seascape reads as a reference to the trafficking of enslaved peoples between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, the critical impact of the work’s thematic is underscored in the soundscape that samples the voice of the Afro-American philosopher Cornel West.

As the artist notes, "In this poetic translation of my painting US ICARUS, I extend the language of movement developed through his performance alter-ego Lazy Bird. Here, gesture and light become verses in a kinetic poem that reimagines the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. I try to embody both figures—the son’s fall and the father’s design—as a metaphor for contemporary society, where citizens become collateral damage of political ambition. Through dance, image, and sound, US ICARUS reveals the tension between aspiration and downfall, between the will to rise and the weight of inherited systems."

A film by Studio RadinDirected by Thomias Radin

Co directed by Nicole Oike

Music by Delawhere

Color grading by Gaëlle Lechevalier

Edit Nicole Oike & Thomias Radin

Costume Aissa Dione

Shot in Bobbio, Italy.

Voice of Cornel West, sampled from his Dartmouth College lecture (2017)

Prayer for humanity by Franciane Radin