David Lynch
Pace will present an exhibition of photographs by David Lynch at its Los Angeles gallery from September 18 through October 24, the first presentation of his work in his home city since his passing in 2025. David Lynch: LA places five of Lynch’s photographic series together in dialogue for the first time, spotlighting his distinctive artistic sensibility in a medium that bridges his significant contributions to painting and film.
For more than fifty years, David Lynch (1946–2025) called Los Angeles home. He arrived in the night in 1972 and awoke to the scent of jasmine and the Southern California light. The city went on to become his inspiration and the locus of his most creative work. David Lynch: LA highlights Lynch’s photo-based works within the myth and mystery of Los Angeles and its emotional landscape. In these images, Lynch holds close to the dream of the city and its archetypes: the ingenue, the shapeshifter, the beauty and darkness. For Lynch, the city’s defining characteristics are atmospheric—physically and psychologically. It is a feeling as much as it is a place.
David Lynch’s prolific nearly six-decade career spanned an extensive range of artmaking including painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, music, and film. Lynch has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions of his artwork, including The Air is on Fire: 40 years of Paintings, Photographs, Drawings, Experimental Films, and Sound Creations, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2007), which traveled to La Triennale di Milano (2008); Cultural Foundation Ekaterina, Moscow (2009); and GL Strand, Copenhagen (2011); Between Two Worlds, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia (2015); and Someone is in my House, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, the Netherlands (2018–19). His work is held in numerous public collections, including Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Museum Würth, Würth Collection, Künzelsau, Germany, among others. In his career as a filmmaker, Lynch wrote and directed critically acclaimed films such as Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990–91).