Reunionby Kristen Sanders

DREAMSONG is pleased to present Reunion, the gallery’s third solo exhibition with California-born, St. Paul-based artist Kristen Sanders. Continuing Sanders’ ongoing exploration of life’s primordial origins, Reunion ponders the evolution of biological consciousness in moonlit paintings of fossils, skulls, seashells and other remnants of existence. The exhibition also marks Dreamsong's first presentation of the artist's ceramic sculptures. Lending dimensionality to her paintings’ aqueous environments, sinuous kelp fronds, limpets and tendrils of seaweed are glazed in seafoam green, russet red and sandy brown.

Inspired partly by the surprise discovery of one of her late uncle’s paintings on eBay earlier this year, the exhibition’s title, Reunion, refers to the lineages that bind us to our ancestors and the natural world, as well as the wonderment inherent in discovering them. Containing similar stylistic hallmarks to her own painting practice, such as suspended and fragmented objects in a tableau combining still life and landscape painting, Sanders borrows directly from her uncle’s oeuvre in the exhibition, with paintings such as The Past is in Every Direction (2026) and Interior (2024) using elements of his compositions and color palette.

Sanders’ palette has continued to evolve, and the artist’s shades of aquamarine, denatured blues and pale yellows combine with her compositions’ soft edges and sophisticated treatment of light to create distinct atmospheric temporalities – the seashore at gray dawn in Fossilized Self (2026); filtered sunlight on the ocean floor in Interval (2026); and the turquoise waters of a marine cave in Beside (2026). This environmental richness is bolstered by Sanders’ recent switch from painting solely with acrylic to a combination of oil and acrylic. This material adjustment has granted her paintings added depth, further embedding their subject matter within her imagined landscapes.

Her subjects, which include fossil skulls, flint stones, seashells and prosthetics, comprise a suite of recurring motifs that Sanders uses to construct a distinct cosmology of evolutionary history. Relics of an unwritten past – early human tools, extinct companion species, the ocean’s largely unexplored biological bounty – each bears a connection to present-day life, elucidating its ontological boundaries and speaking to the enduring mysteries of our biological lineage. In this sense, Sanders paints around her true subject matter – our bodies and minds – in order to better understand our relationships, not only with our natural environment, but with the deep time that precedes, envelops and awaits us.