“What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare, and although his lovelorn Romeo was forced by unhappy circumstance to discount the importance of names, contemporary artists such as David Lynch take a different view. Lynch sets great store by the relationship between objects, characters and places and their names, and an exhibition at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art is coming at his work from a textual angle in order to shed some light on the famously dark and complex world of the filmmaker.
David Lynch Naming will arrive in the North East in December having originally debuted in Los Angeles and later received acclaim in New York. The exhibition spans Lynch’s entire creative output, including his lesser-seen photography, drawings and paintings, and is timed to coincide with the hotly-anticipated return of cult TV series Twin Peaks. The show jumps off in 1968 with Lynch’s student film The Alphabet, inspired by a dream related by his wife which he adapted into “a little nightmare about the fear connected to learning”. The show, put together with the help of the man himself, continues through Lynch’s oeuvre highlighting the important links between text and image, explaining how the two work together to create new meanings in the “Lynchian” universe. David Lynch Naming runs from 12 December to 26 March next year.
Image © David Lynch, TV BBQ, 2009. Watercolour.
Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles.
Photography: Brian Forrest.
Image © David Lynch, Untitled (Los Angeles), 1979.
Archival silver gelatin print
Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles.
Photography: Brian Forrest.
Image © David Lynch, Dog, 2012. Mixed media on paper.
Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles.
Photography: Brian Forrest.
Image © David Lynch, Divided, undated. Watercolour.
Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles.
Photography: Brian Forrest.
Image © David Lynch, Telephone, undated.
Oil and mixed media on canvas.
Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles.
Photography: Brian Forrest.
