David Lynch

Big Bongo Night

Past
Nov 4 – Dec 17, 2022
New York

Exhibition Details:

David Lynch
Big Bongo Night
Nov 4 – Dec 17, 2022

Gallery:

540 West 25th Street
New York

Press:

Press Release

Connect:

(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Above: David Lynch, White Table Top Lamp, 2022 © David Lynch

Pace is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new and recent work by David Lynch, marking the artist’s first show with the gallery.

Titled Big Bongo Night, the exhibition will feature mixed media sculptures, paintings, and a work on paper that shed light on Lynch’s distinctive visual arts practice. Concurrent with Lynch’s debut at Pace, Sperone Westwater in New York will present I Like to See My Sheep, a show dedicated to his works on paper that follows the artist’s major solo exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and drawings with the gallery in 2019.

The artist’s first exhibition with Pace—bringing together disquieting scenes on wood panel and paper as well as sculptures with light components—will spotlight his storytelling abilities. Lynch’s artworks often meditate on moments of disruption in domestic, everyday settings. Rife with unsettling, threatening, and enigmatic images, the artist’s work draws from the visual languages of Surrealism and Art Brut. Bringing madcap forms and media into conversation, Lynch’s semi-abstract paintings, which often feature flattened compositions and perspectival distortions, explore enactments of bodily and industrial decay. At the core of these works is a pervasive unease that speaks to the dark realities of contemporary American life.

Among the paintings included in Lynch’s forthcoming show with Pace is Airplane in Sky / Ant (2022), a fantastical tableau depicting a distressed ant at its center and incorporating playful textual elements. “It comes with the idea and it’s the idea that starts you, and then it’s this process of action and reaction,” Lynch has said of his approach to painting. “This is the thing you hope to keep alive. And there’s got to be a freedom to say, that didn’t work, it’s got to go. Then in the process of destruction, a beautiful new thing can emerge...random things, random choices and then—bang, an idea comes.”

A selection of Lynch’s mixed media lamp sculptures will also figure prominently in the exhibition. These works— forged with various combinations of steel, wood, resin, plexiglass, and plaster—are derived from the artist’s early paintings and experimentations with projection and moving images. Depending on their material makeups, these structures range from linear to geometric to biomorphic. “Electricity is so thrilling and think about wood...Nature supplies this for us, all different kinds of wood, and the structure of it can be sawed, sanded, shaped, polished, turned into furniture, so many things like houses,” Lynch has said of his fascination with the sculptures’ materiality.

Featured Works

Ant on My Arm by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Ant on My Arm*, n.d., mixed media on paper, 22-1/4" × 30" (56.5 cm × 76.2 cm) (paper size, unframed) Framed Size: 28 x 35-1/2 x 1-1/2 inches

Head on Hill with Cloud and Airplane by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Head on Hill with Cloud and Airplane*, 2021, Mixed media, Image Dimensions: 40 x 40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 centimeters) Framed Size: 50-1/2 x 50-1/2 x 4-7/8 inches

Ladder Lamp by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Ladder Lamp*, 2022, Cold-rolled steel, plaster, resin, 60-1/4" × 13" × 16" (153 cm × 33 cm × 40.6 cm)

Mappa Burl Top Lamp by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Mappa Burl Top Lamp*, 2022, cold-rolled steel, mappa burl, plexiglass, 61-1/2" × 9" × 9" (156.2 cm × 22.9 cm × 22.9 cm)

Tricolor Highrise Lamp by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Tricolor Highrise Lamp*, 2022, cold-rolled steel and resin, 57-1/2" × 14" × 24" (146.1 cm × 35.6 cm × 61 cm)

White Table Top Lamp by David Lynch — David Lynch, *White Table Top Lamp*, 2022, Cold-rolled steel, plaster, resin, 13-3/4" × 6" × 6" (34.9 cm × 15.2 cm × 15.2 cm)

Big Bongo Night by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Big Bongo Night*, 2021, Mixed media, 50" × 60" (127 cm × 152.4 cm) Framed Size: 60-1/2 x 70-3/8 x 4-3/4 inches

Dream 9B: Where is the Alligator? by David Lynch — David Lynch, *Dream 9B: Where is the Alligator?*, 2022, Mixed media, 50" × 60" × 2-1/2" (127 cm × 152.4 cm × 6.4 cm) Framed Size: 60-3/4 x 70-5/8 x 6 inches

Installation Views

LYNCH_inst_540_221102_0468_NoScale — 7/10

About the Artist

David Lynch’s five-decade career spans an extensive range of artmaking including painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, music, and film.

Learn More

Journal

View All