David Lynch Naming is a new LA exhibition curated by Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York, traces how Lynch uses “naming” in film, photography, drawings, watercolors, painting and prints from 1968 to the present. The complex relationship between objects and their names has been a point of departure in his work since The Alphabet, the second short film he made when he was student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in 1968. For Lynch, the act of naming something is never simple. The drawing of an “ant” and the written word “ant” are never co-equal or necessarily descriptive in Lynch’s universe. His images and text “vibrate” against each other in unusual ways to create new meanings and a deeper understanding of how language operates in an attempt to expose the deeper structure of reality.
In addition to this thematic selection, a group of new paintings, drawings, and watercolors will also be on view. Within these works Lynch functions as an omnipresent narrator who candidly describes his representation of objects and figures in situations that are simultaneously commonplace yet unexpected.
David Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana and studied painting at the The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has exhibited widely including at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the GL Strand in Copenhagen, and the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, among other international institutions. He has also been the subject of exhibitions at Leo Castelli Gallery, James Corcoran Gallery, Jack Tilton Gallery and Kayne Griffin Corcoran. Lynch is also known as a filmmaker and recording artist 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.
Brett Littman has held the position of Executive Director of The Drawing Center, New York since 2007, after serving as deputy director of MoMA PS1 in New York from 2003 to 2007. Since 1996, he has contributed news and commentary to a range of international publications and critical essays to many scholarly art and design catalogues.
David Lynch: Naming November 23, 2013–January 4, 2014
Kayne Griffin Corcoran 1201 South La Brea Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90019