5 Questions – Lunita-July Dorn

CH The Achim Freyer Kunsthaus is not an easy place to exhibit. Achim Freyer’s collection holds more than 2,300 works, bringing together modern art, Art Brut, souvenirs and memorabilia from very different worlds. Your first institutional solo exhibition, Like a Bird on a Wire, now enters this dense and highly personal environment. What fascinates you about the Kunsthaus and its very particular way of collecting and presenting art? And what happens to your own works once they enter such a place?

LJD The first time I walked into the house and saw all the art, I was fascinated. I love the way the collection is installed. There’s something wonderfully overwhelming about it, while each work still has room to be seen and appreciated on its own as well as in relation to the collection as a whole. I’m very drawn to this way of collecting. Naturally, a private house is a very different setting from a white cube. So, the installation called for an another approach than you might take in a conventional gallery. I tried to incorporate something of the way the collection is hung into my own installation, allowing it to resonate with the existing arrangement. That said, it’s always exciting to work with different spaces, and I believe that showing works in such contexts can bring out new qualities in them. And I couldn’t have found myself in better company, which makes the experience all the more special.

CH Over and over again, you turn yourself into the protagonist of your paintings. Still, you’ve said that you’re not interested in mere self-portraits. If these are portraits, but not quite self-portraits, who is this “you” that keeps reappearing?

LJD Of course it’s me, but it’s not really about self-portraiture as such. It’s more about how many different facets we all have. I can be one way today and someone completely different tomorrow, and yet I’m still me. In that sense, it feels natural to be the protagonist in my paintings, since the works are connected to my own person in one way or another. Still at the moment, I’m also really enjoying observing and painting other people.

CH Your paintings are built through layers, overpainting, erasure and spontaneous decisions. You’ve said that it’s liberating to know that nobody tells you when a painting is finished. Is painting, for you, ultimately an act of losing control rather than gaining it?

LJD It’s both. For me, painting is always a search, a form of communication. I never know exactly how a painting will turn out. I let myself be surprised and in the process I discover things I didn’t know before. That’s how I keep learning, and failing. The two go hand in hand. If I knew from the beginning how a painting would end, I’d get bored, and the paintings would be dead.

CH Your images move between memory, fantasy, humour, desire and uncertainty, often without giving the viewer a clear way to separate one from the other. Do you think a painting needs to make sense, or can bafflement be a more honest state?

LJD I don’t think a work needs to make sense, at least not in that way. It’s more about what moves you. I don’t want to tell people what to feel or think, which is why I like leaving things open. I might paint a memory that makes me smile, while someone else might see it and think of a friend they’ve lost. I find that beautiful, the way a painting can mean something completely different to everyone who looks at it.

CH In a relatively short time, your work has gained national and international recognition and is now entering the institutional context. At the same time, you’ve insisted that you don’t want to commit yourself to one visual language. How do you protect your freedom when the art world suddenly starts placing demands and expectations on your work?

LJD The beauty of it is that I don’t care about what the art market might think when I paint. As long as things keep inspiring me, I’ll keep painting. What comes out of it, we’ll see ...