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We’re prone to speak as if dreaming were either too much or nothing at all One person’s ‘dreamer’ is a radical, someone who’d storm an old order; another’s is irresponsible, their head in the clouds The Greek artist Sofia Stevi studies both kinds of dreamer In ‘turning forty winks into a decade’ at Gateshead’s BALTIC, her first solo show in the UK, scenes painted in Japanese ink on white cotton appear like snapshots from a nocturnal imagination Bodies arrive as disassembled parts, emerging and receding again through washes of vibrant colour The human figure is fragmented, distorted – you catch the shapes of noses, fingers, and breasts, as if they were on the move   The world of Stevi’s paintings is full of cartoonish gusts and brilliant flashes Take the bursts of air that swirl around the giant hand in just like honey (2016), as it gently pinches a fleshy ball The painting pleads for comic release: there are hints of honking noses and farting clouds But the humour is tempered by a suggestion of violence The fingernail looks sharp, and the balls recoil, tender to the touch   Stevi’s canvases, like good therapists, await your version of events (After all, dreams have a multiple logic; there’s no perfect way to describe how they look) The amorphous shapes in are we ever really in control (2017) and history is not kind (2016) could be human innards or wishbones, and the artist’s use of colour does little to clarify the tone: in the former, the contours are swamped by darkness, and in the latter, they line up proudly in pink Elsewhere, the uncertain moods of Stevi’s figures keep you guessing With foliage whipping around them, the sisterly bodies of lizzie & laura (2017) are conjoined in a boxy dress It’s open to the viewer as to whether they are caged by their outfits, or bound together by love   In mary’s pink (2017) a cluster of organic shapes occupy the interstice between tulips and cervixes, gesturing to the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe Beside a bulb of garlic and a sharp knife in dinner in vienna I (2016),