In Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, David Lynch poses his sentiments on Los Angeles:

“Even with smog, there's something about that light that's not harsh, but bright and smooth. It fills me with the feeling that all possibilities are available."

It’s quite obvious that we have a lot to thank David Lynch for– his insurmountable film contributions, his philosophies on consciousness and creativity, and his generally ineffable artistic influence. Lynch walked the razor-thin line between probing truth and relishing in the unknown, forging works that felt philosophically boundless yet ultra-specific. His portraits of obscurity were exhaustive, yet respectful of what is recondite. 

It is widely known that the spirit of LA is the centrifugal force of Lynch’s repertoire, the canvas for his unique capacity to locate beauty in the uncanny. To commemorate his love of the city, Pace Gallery presents David Lynch: LA, a series of photographs taken between 1979 and 2008 that embody Lynch’s Los Angeles. 

True to the Lynchian sensibility, there’s obviously a sense of liminality to his photographs. Though his visual language is ostensibly universal at this point, Lynch’s singular perspective still feels new. The women are not just depicted as femme fatales but as anchors of the terrain; the distorted landscape shots feel both meticulous and intuitive, and an eeriness emanates from Lynch’s photos, as if they were either taken in reality or derived from a dream. Lynch’s LA becomes archetypal and multi-dimensional, underscored by portraits of smoke and the quintessential women who inhabit it. The photographs aren’t reductive or tired (considering that he is the polestar of surrealist art)— they reiterate his distinctive ability to fuse the material with the preternatural, his ability to render the obscure as sublime.

David Lynch exists in perpetuity, immortalized forever by his epiphanic and Promethean repertoire. David Lynch: LA constitutes the first exhibition of Lynch’s oeuvre since his death, and it will run from September 19th – December 23rd. Find information here. 

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