Pastel Dreams

Pastel Dreams brings together paintings by Kristen Rästas that explore the relationship between the physical world and inner experience, and the contradiction between the desire to belong and the fear of losing oneself. The exhibition idea draws on the concept of ego death, which in philosophy and psychology describes the dissolution of one’s sense of self. Related to Carl Gustav Jung’s ideas on psychic transformation, it suggests a loosening of the boundaries between the self and the world, opening up the possibility of experiencing oneself as part of a larger whole, which can be both frightening and liberating. In Rästas’s paintings, figures and suggestive elements occupy abstract environments where familiar forms become uncertain, while expansive, imagined landscapes give shape to internal states of perception and emotion. Despite their intangible substance, these images are grounded in a physical approach to painting. Thick paint and rough surfaces emphasise the material presence of the works, setting the solidity of the painted surface against the instability of what it depicts. Pastel Dreams considers identity as something fluid rather than fixed. A quiet queer sensibility runs through the works, in which the need for connection lives alongside the experience of otherness, and belonging is found in uncertainty.