Luna - July Dorn – like a bird on a wire

The first institutional solo exhibition of Berlin painter Lunita-July Dorn, presented at the Achim Freyer Kunsthaus in conjunction with Berlin Art Week 2026. About To mark Berlin Art Week 2026, the Achim Freyer Kunsthaus presents the first institutional solo exhibition of the young Berlin painter Lunita-July Dorn: Like a Bird on a Wire. In her large-format paintings and drawings, Dorn repeatedly places herself in the role of the imaginary protagonist. Whether individually or in multiple works, her own portrait serves as the starting point for a compelling painterly self-examination, through which she explores individual and social role models. Dorn weaves personal memories and feelings with fantastical motifs and scenes to create graceful, autofictional narratives. Her paintings possess a touching immediacy and preserve the traces of her creative process. She deliberately leaves open the possibility of underdrawing, overdrawing, layering, erasures, and rediscovered passages. Her search for identity—both artistic and psychological—is therefore not a closed process, but a state of constant transformation. Dorn's exhibition revolves around being at one with oneself as an existential experience and tells of the often unbearable longing for freedom, for love, for happiness. At the heart of her exhibition is the exploration of the detours, wrong turns, and unanswered questions that every life brings with it. Her paintings open up spaces in which inner and outer realities merge, where dreams and desires, everyday life and harsh reality constantly shift places. Dorn explores closeness and distance, security and insecurity, memory and presence. Through a vague desire for change, the familiar can become alien, the self can suddenly elude all influence, or, in utter uncertainty, find its footing. Her works move between belonging and uncanny, "somewhere between departure and farewell," arrival and sojourn. In this subtle liminal space, Dorn opens up a poetic space for exploring how we humans find ourselves and feel at home in the world. How we joyfully discover new things, take different paths, open ourselves to the unknown, and at the same time, with a touch of melancholy, leave behind the familiar. Letting go of certainties, finding our footing in the face of uncertainty. She borrows her exhibition title from Leonard Cohen's song of the same name, which he wrote at almost the same age. And like Cohen, Dorn also explores the turmoil between youthful yearning for unfettered freedom, the vulnerable need for a place of one's own, and a captivating reality with its sobering obligations in her paintings. In dialogue with the collection of modern art, Art Brut, and Outsider Art, Lunita-July Dorn does not merely use the Achim Freyer Kunsthaus as a stage. Rather, she connects her works with the collection's unique atmosphere and the countless artistic destinies, objects, and spaces preserved within it, creating a symbolic tableau of all those relationships that shape our lives. Lunita-July Dorn was born in Berlin in 1999 and lives there. From 2020 to 2026, she studied at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. In 2025/26, she was nominated for the Young Generation Art Award, Berlin. Selected solo exhibitions: 2025: Elektrohalle Romberg, Salzburg; Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Galerie Judith Andreae, Bonn. Selected group exhibitions: 2026: AMOCA Artistic Museum of Contemporary Art, Cardiff. 2025: Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen; Palazzo Bembo, Venice; Miettinen Collection, Berlin; Sacrow Palace, Potsdam. 2023: Galerie Judith Andreae, Bonn. 2022: Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Funded by the decentralized cultural work program of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district office Read more Toggle Drawing Painting