BERLIN.- Esther Schipper Berlin is presenting Echoes of KA, an exhibition by Thomias Radin with all new paintings and several sculptural works. This is Radin's fourth project with the gallery, following his exhibitions in Paris and Seoul, and a presentation in Berlin, between 2025 and 2024, the year he joined the program.
Profoundly shaped by his birthplace, Guadeloupe, and his upbringing in France, Radin’s practice draws on layered cultural inheritances spanning the Caribbean and Europe. Dance, painting and sculpture interlock in his work. His paintings, often set in hand-carved wooden frames, feature motifs—among them angels, architectural forms, marble, or water—that reflect an engagement with European visual heritage alongside ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Christian mythologies. Taking inspiration from the ancient Egyptian concept of Ka—an invisible life force that transcends time and geography—Radin’s exhibition follows its movement from Africa to the Caribbean and Europe as an allegorical motif that reverberates across music, dance, language, and sculpture.
In Creole—a language formed from French, Kikongo, and Native Amerindian languages—the verb ka, borrowed from Kikongo, functions as a marker of action and becoming. Within this linguistic context, ka suggests movement and continuity across time and geography. Vitality is understood not as an isolated force, but as something shared and circulating, capable of transformation through bodies and communities. Radin approaches this idea as a framework for thinking about gesture, resonance, and collective action.
The exhibition space is conceived as a quiet courtyard. Two wooden arches flank the entrances to the exhibition, marking points of passage. A sequence of four trompe l'œil frescoes depicting a seascape creates this setting, and mirrored surfaces affixed to two central pillars reflect and multiply the viewer’s presence. Here, the courtyard functions not only as an architectural reference, but also as a social space—a place for encounters, circulation, and contemplation. In this way, it echoes Édouard Glissant’s notion of the “creole garden,” where identity grows through relation, crossings, and exchanges rather than fixed origins. Radin’s courtyard becomes a spatial expression of this idea: an environment where echoes reverberate and histories converge.
For this constellation of paintings, Radin’s process revolves around the idea of echo. His method translates metaphysical and spiritual concepts into visual fragments, recalling how Eadweard Muybridge decomposed movement into sequential images. Each fragment functions as a suspended vibration between what has occurred and what continues to resonate. To dance—to activate and articulate the body—is itself an echo of rhythm and frequency. The paintings, often executed in dynamic gestures, present figures caught mid-movement, their poses charged with physical intensity. Movement becomes a vehicle for memory and storytelling, where gesture carries historical and spiritual weight.
Dance is central to Radin's practice. Music and movement enter his paintings through fragmented bodies, gestural brushwork, and references to Hip Hop, Gwo Ka, and Capoeira. His engagement with Caribbean dance traditions extends to their influence on contemporary choreography, including figures such as Alvin Ailey, Germaine Acogny, and Ismael Ivo, whose practices connect performance with spirituality and political consciousness.
The sculptural works extend this vocabulary into space. Hand-carved and rooted in a family tradition of carpentry practiced over generations, Radin's structures affirm woodwork as both material inheritance and social model. Architectural elements shape the setting, while bench-like elements invite visitors to sit, contemplate and commune. Part of the bench-like sculptures are oversized dominoes, a recurring motif, that pay tribute to everyday life in Guadeloupe, celebrating vernacular mathematics and the passing of knowledge that forges lasting connections across generations.
