[Focus] – Kerstin Arnold, “The Dream”, 2011

Kerstin Arnold, “The Dream”, 2011, Oil on canvas, 160 × 160 × 5 cm

At first glance, the scene feels calm. A woman sits in an armchair, absorbed in a book, her posture relaxed and familiar. Yet the longer you look, the more something subtly unsettling begins to emerge.

The background dissolves into a soft, fog-like gradient, a blurred camaïeu that feels less like a room than a mental space. In light of the title, The Dream, the scene begins to read as a threshold state, suspended between wakefulness and imagination. The act of reading reinforces this ambiguity, pulling the figure inward and away from the visible world, while leaving us to wonder what she is thinking, what story holds her attention, what thoughts remain inaccessible.
Light isolates the figure with an almost staged precision. She appears illuminated, set apart, while everything around her fades. The moment feels composed, observed. Is she aware of being seen, or fully immersed in this dreamlike pause?

In her practice, Kerstin Arnold explicitly explores the boundary between what is observed and what is felt, drawing on personal experiences of rupture, relocation, and rebuilding. Here, the painting does not narrate an event, but holds a psychological state.

The Dream offers no clear answers; it invites the viewer to project, to reflect, and to remain within that suspended space between reality and imagination.