The Air Is On Fire!

david K lynch

I visited the David Lynch exhibition yesterday at the Paris Fondation Cartier. Having seen some of his paintings online already, some of his photographs and most of his short films/animation, I wasn't as overwhelmed/surprised as I imagined. The scenography is rough and colossal (industrial scafolding structures) but there are only 4 rooms to cross, bathed in a semi-darkness, kinda half-night. Although some of the pieces are really impressive and worth a direct contact. Others require some explanations/guidance... You can imagine the typical Lynchian soundscape resonating in the speakers, especially certain paintings have their own sound with a pushbutton.

There are about 30 canvas, and some big ones, bigger than me. The hall they are installed in is a glassbox where the sun casts changing shadows on the painting surfaces. They are in tune with the work he did at the Art School (like the ones we see in his short films : Six Figures Getting Sick only more abstract/trash formally and more focused on sexual trauma and dreamwork). He refused to order them chronologically so it's impossible to make correlation with the evolution of his filmography... it's a shame.

With his return to the roots in INLAND EMPIRE, especially the scene towards the end, when Nikki/Grace shoots The Phantom in the face, that looks a lot like one of his large canvas titled "This Man Was Shot 0.9502 Seconds Ago" from 2004 (see e-Cahiers Feb. 2007, p. 28). I would love to see him develop this kind of experimental video-collage palimpsest in his future features, as well as playing around with non-representional sculptures like he did in The Grandmother or Eraserhead. That would create captivating atmospheres, and shake up the classicist establishment of movies.

Although among his hundreds of doodles (on post-it's, napkins, script pages, bills...) we can note the current obsession with a certain movie, either by the inclusion of names, words or special design refering to one of his film. Hey there is even one doodle with "Jonathan Rosenbaum" written on it! aint it cool? are they friends? ;)
There are also tel numbers, addresses, overheard lines, various notes incorporated under the drawing or decorated around. This guy never stops drawing everywhere he goes it seems, on any material, with any pen and with a free wheel inspiration. More than with his films, we could talk of the surrealist gameplay of automatic writing for his doodles (or canvas). "Automatic doodle". The shapes developped to fill the page with geometrical pattern carefuly avoid the usual conventions of classicism symetry, orthogonality, equilibrium, continuity. Rarely does he include ready-made recognizable shapes, sometimes diformed characters. It's a universe of texture and lighting vibration rather than a representation. It's fascinating to see his constant research for original creativity, something that doesn't look like something else, new shapes, new signs, a life of its own striking the imagination of the viewer (and Lynch himself too obviously) in unexpected ways. It's a kind of a Rorschach inkblot test Lynch imposes onto himself. Or maybe the tentative re-enactment of a nightmare peculiar atmosphere. His canvas too eschew formality, but melting a 3D amorphous character into the background of the same color. Meanwhile he likes to add letters and words as if to spell out each elements, each action, each moment.

He has blown up a few of his doodle in large serigraphies, which highlights a powerful design with the scale leap (harmonious abstract composition, simple colors, graphical dynamics). Lynch says they'd make amazing rugs and I agree, a huge thick "contemporean design" carpet or a mural Aubusson tapestry (like Cocteau used to do).

The mini drawing of a room materialized into a piece of set we can walk in is a cool experience. The carpet is made out of a handdrawn pattern and the walls with childlike paintings, even funky furniture with soft edges.

They also installed a small theatre, with black curtains and the 4th wall opened, where Lynch's experimental shorts and web animation are projected in loop. There I watched Out Younder, Six Figures Getting Sick, The Alphabet and The Grandmother.
So it's funny to stand there watching his films, surrounded by his photographic work on the walls. I really like the wall projected films in exhibitions, it adds a multimedia experience and also decontextualize the animated image. It's like watching a movie in a cinema while walking around the room, without sitting at the same place all the time.
They do that at the Cinémathèque exhibitions too. Last year they projected Renoir films on the walls (next to Auguste Renoir paintings), Almodovar clips on transluscent panes hanging from the ceiling (visible from both sides), and for the German Expressionism exhibition too, loops of silent scenes next to the wall sized posters. Films used to animate screen-walls create such an interactive theatrality within our environment.

The Photoshop doctoring of old pornographic photographs or recent nudes, dismembering their bodies into alien shapes, is among the most interesting researches. We can feel a distant influence of Max Ernst collages, Dali's soft bodies, and of course Bacon's carnal butchery. Which takes a disturbing dimension when fabricated from photos of real-life people, rather than from paintings.