David Lynch @ Griffin Gallery, Santa Monica

DAVID LYNCH: New Paintings

September 12th - December 12th, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12th at 8 PM

GRIFFIN is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new monumental paintings by David Lynch. This will be his first exhibition with the gallery and his first solo exhibition of paintings in Los Angeles in over a decade.

David Lynch: New Paintings is presented in collaboration with James Corcoran Gallery, whose relationship of more than twenty years with the artist has led to numerous exhibitions, including three solo shows at the James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica in 1987, 1989, and 1993, as well as museum shows at the Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan in 1991 and the Sala Parpallo, Valencia, Spain in 1992. Lynch was also the subject of a 1989 solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and more recently, a 2007 retrospective at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, which showed 40 years of his paintings, drawings, and photographs. [See my blog here, here, here and here.].

Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana. He is that rare phenomenon of an artist who transcends mediums to produce a distinctive and consistent vision of the world. Today he is known as a moviemaker who in the past three decades has produced critically acclaimed films such as Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire and the television series Twin Peaks.

At the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Lynch studied painting and live animation. He then entered the Masters Program at the American Film Institute in 1971 that allowed him to develop and complete his first feature film, Eraserhead, in 1976.

While many film directors have made forays into the other visual arts usually as filmmaking aids, Lynch’s paintings, cartoons and photography are integral to his vision and comprise a body of work in their own right. Yet ultimately Lynch is unique in creating works that touch a nerve in the narrative of the American psyche no matter the medium.

Gallery Web Site / Article in The L.A. Times

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