Ausstellung: Transition Notes III

Antje Görner
Transition Notes

In music, a transition is a passage that connects two different sections, movements, or ideas, ensuring a flow rather than an abrupt shift. In the exhibition Transition Notes, artist Antje Görner presents new works created in 2025/26, in which processuality emerges as the foundation of her artistic method and as an integral part of her lived experience. In her recent works, Görner explores time and form as states that never reach final completion, since it is the artist herself who senses the moment of closure and accepts it as an inseparable part of the creative process. The making of a painting here is not linked to the direct execution of a sketch or the enlargement of a predetermined image, but arises as a processual act to which Antje returns again and again, both in her life and in her artistic practice, and it is precisely this possibility of returning that becomes the most valuable dimension of her work.

The exhibition presents two new pieces without figurative elements, where the composition is built on a bright, linear, and fluid accent of fluorescent pink, marking a shift towards sensitive abstraction in which color and line operate as energy rather than form. Alongside them, an earlier group of works is shown, where figurative elements—appearing through layers of line and stain—are connected to explorations of femininity and the emergence of images within spontaneous, linear structures. These paintings resonate more darkly, with a denser tonal presence, allowing the viewer to encounter the inner tensions of her search. This trajectory then leads Görner to oil painting, which reshapes her relationship with the medium: the works become lighter in tonality, enriched by a chromatic interplay of green and its many variations—from cold to warm, from saturated to transparent—thus extending the depth of her painterly language. The presentation also includes works on paper, where the artist explores an unmixed technique and employs scratching as a method, carving lines and textures into the surface to generate additional relief and material depth.

Rather than a fixed statement, Transition Notes can be understood as a set of marginalia: observations, fragments, and pauses that trace the passage from one state to another. Together these bodies of work articulate a cycle where transitions are not resolutions but openings, allowing color, line, and gesture to remain fluid and alive. In this rhythm one can sense an affinity with Beckett’s literary practice, where silences and pauses hold equal weight with words, and where unfinished states are not a lack but a source of meaning. Görner’s works similarly resist definitive closure and remain open to continuous interpretation, transforming incompleteness into the essence of expression. On a broader level, the series Transition Notes reflects the artist’s larger goal: to continue being a painter, to approach time not only as a subject of reflection but also as a form of self-management and independence. Each work thus becomes an autonomous interpretation of ideas and content, affirming Görner’s practice as one of presence, resilience, and renewal.

Anna Galeeva (@anngaleeva)