David Lynch is enjoying his first solo art exhibit in New York since 1989 at the Tilton Gallery. Best known for surrealistic films such as "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive", both of which earned him Best Director Oscar nods, Lynch originally trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
Given his notable filmmaking career, it is no surprise that his work on display at the Tilton Gallery's Upper East Side townhouse location incorporates a number of distorted photographic images, as well as a showcase short video, "Mystery of the Seeing Hand and Sphere" from 2009.
The work on display is an intriguing mix of oil and mixed media images, as well as digital prints, with a few charcoal drawings added to the mix. While the range of media may sound diffuse, the overall sense of distorted visual imagery is of a piece and in line with the artist's overarching focus on the bizarre lurking beyond the surface of the mundane.
What's so fascinating about Lynch's work is his ability to delve into various media, including film, video, painting, photography, and recently music, while sustaining a distinctive, gradually evolving vision. What distinguishes his work from that of fellow outre filmmaker Tim Burton, for example, is that Lynch eschewed for-hire feature film directing projects early in his career (the unsuccessful "Dune") to pursue his own singular muse in a series of acclaimed films such as the aforementioned films, as well as "Wild at Heart" and "Lost Highway".
Burton has been unusually successful honing his distinctively quirky, macabre vision in a series of Hollywood films, inevitably starring the iconoclastic film star Johnny Depp. One difference is that Burton has largely remained focused on pop cultural references presented in a linear cinematic style, whether it be "Batman", "Sleepy Hollow", or "Sweeney Todd". That his is a distinctive vision is undeniable, yet his intent is clearly as a filmmaker subverting the medium, like John Waters, versus a visual artist who happens to make films, like Lynch and fellow hyphenate David Byrne, an accomplished visual artist as well as famous musician.
All are important artists, yet it is the work of the singularly ambitious Lynch that is likely as any to endure in the cultural discourse of our time, as he has done as much as any contemporary filmmaker to expand the boundaries of popular culture to include the sort of art historical references, like surrealism, that are destined to elevate cinema, the art form to which he has devoted his primary energies, into the realm of high art.
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