Lunita-July Dorn
Wenn man Musik malen könnte, wär die Welt ne schönere
(If One Could Paint Music, the World Would Be a More Beautiful Place)

15 NOV 2025 until 31 JAN 2026
Opening – 14 NOV 2025, 6-8 pm

Tanya Leighton is pleased to present ‘Wenn man Musik malen könnte, wär die Welt ne schönere’, the first solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Lunita-July Dorn at the gallery.

In her large-scale acrylic paintings, Dorn creates dynamic visual worlds that oscillate between surreal narrative and personal reflection. Her works are poetic intertwinings of personal memories and artistic expression, revealing a haunting, almost tangible intimacy. Dorn seduces with an unmistakably free painting style: broad, energetic brushstrokes and expressive gestures meet subtle details. Her process is radically intuitive—figures emerge spontaneously, without preliminary sketches, flowing directly from her imagination onto the canvas. Layers of overpainting and correction remain visible, lending her works their distinctive, pulsating vitality. The only elements rendered in clear, precise detail are the faces of the protagonists—self-portraits that return our gaze again and again.

The self-portrait has become Dorn’s signature. With unflinching clarity, she places herself at the center of her practice, using her own image as a compass for emotional and intellectual exploration. Through subtle gestures, shifting expressions, and immersive settings, she captures the complexity of a young woman seeking her place in the world. While Dorn’s earlier works explored fictitious scenarios in which her figure appeared in imagined spaces, her recent paintings turn to concrete memories and lived experiences—snapshots of moments drawn directly from her life.

For this exhibition, a new and central element emerges in her works: music. Songs that have accompanied Dorn over the years—from Pink Floyd to The Doors—become textual fragments across her canvases. Lyrics appear like footnotes along the lower edges, while notes and symbols drift through the pictorial space, detached from their origins to become part of the composition. Music transforms into memory, transporting us to other places, turning us into time travelers. Music becomes emotion translated into color. Dorn’s figures seem to drift within this in-between world, this world of sound. They merge with their surroundings, their bodies outlined only by white lines, translucent and ethereal. Some wander between worlds, angellike with wings; others stride forward, grounded and proud. Holding flowers and apples, they carry both love and transience within them.

Lunita-July Dorn (born 1999, lives and works in Berlin) studies at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee under Friederike Feldmann. She is currently nominated for the Young Generation Art Award 2025, with an exhibition of the five finalists opening in Berlin in late November. Dorn has participated in group exhibitions including “Gegen den Strich – GEN Z in der Kunst” at Schloss Sacrow, Potsdam (2024); “Unapologetic WomXn” at Palazzo Bembo, Venice (2024); and “Big City Baby” at ZAK – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022). Earlier this year, she presented her first solo exhibition at Galerie Judith Andreae, Bonn.