A NEW SHOW IN BERLIN INVESTIGATES 30 RISING ARTISTS WHO HOLD DAVID LYNCH AS THEIR ULTIMATE INSPIRATION. HERE, FOUR OF THEM REFLECT ON THE POWER OF LYNCH, AND THEIR OWN MEMORIES OF HIS GROUNDBREAKING WORK
For an artist no one seems able to fully understand, David Lynch provokes people to have a lot to say. For "Lynchmob," show organizers Emilie Trice and Christopher David, ex-pat godparents of Berlin's contemporary international art community, have rounded up more that thirty artists whose work is inspired by Lynch in some way. Here, four of the thirty explain their own links to Lynch: German sculptor Hannes Bend, who crafts hunters' trophies from glistening hard candy; Sheffield-born video artist and Projekt Galerie party starter Tiphaine Shipman whose "Lynchmob" video shows her running naked in a panic through dark woods; painter David Nicholson, whose produces paintings with a Lynch-like clash between their pristine surfaces and their dirty and dark subject matter; and John Isaacs, whose mountain of bloody whale blubber stole the 2007 Serpentine Gallery's show, "In the Darkest Hour There May Be Light, Works from Damien Hirst's Murderme Collection," and who will present more of the work that Eleanor Heartney described as a Lynchian blend of "part bad-boy perversity, part mock-science, part neo-romantic fantasy" at Haunch of Venison this month.
Their comments are accompanied by a portrait taken by "Lynchmob" artist Maxime Ballesteros. Ballesteros's own romantically raw photographs for "Lynchmob" combine the gritty glory of Ryan McGinley, Corinne Day, and Dash Snow with the sexy insanity of Wild at Heart's "Sailor and Lula." Ana Finel Honigman
HANNES BEND
Lynch is such a great film director, photographer, and painter, and I found so much inspiration in his work for "Lynchmob." First of all, the composition of images within the movies remind me so much of great painters. I find the stage design so interesting—it underlines the dramaturgy in such a unique and integrative way, almost like installations. An example would be the scene with the Slow Club in Blue Velvet, in which the deer hunter's bone and horn trophies among the pink neon lights outside the club enforce the violent aspects of the action in the club, in a way I find surreal.
Additionally, the acting has such psychological depth, while somehow maintaining David Lynch's special, often surprising and unexpected humor, which manages to contradict and level out the deeper and often darker meanings in a wonderful way. I was also inspired in many ways by his playful use of clichés and stereotypes in everyday situations, not to mention his often present femme fatale/virgin themes, which I also play on often in my work in "Lynchmob."
I love how his movies are elusive. I also admire that there are so many hidden meanings within them, so many levels, yet the movies still keep the audience interested superficially as well. I was also inspired by his photography, specifically the work he did for Christian Louboutin. Hannes Bend
TIPHAINE SHIPMAN
The earliest memory I have of David Lynch is being 10 years old and being allowed to stay up late so I could sit and watch Twin Peaks with my whole family. I remember asking my mother, Why is that lady talking to a log?, and her replying with a shrug of her shoulders.
Now here comes the science. I would not describe Lynch's work as surreal, but as hyper-real. Surrealism suggests that anything you can dream about can happen, even the implausible. But it seems to me that Lynch has very strict boundaries for what does happen. His films are based around an extension of the mundane. It is the skewing or debasing of a present reality rather than the creation of a new reality that is important.
Lynch's unreality is so close to the possibility of reality that the consciousness is no longer able to distinguish reality from fantasy. It could be a dark nightmare or a reality. While a woman talking to a log is crazy, you accept that this could actually be someone's reality, and while a dwarf speaking backwards and dancing around in a red room could happen in a dream, which in itself is not a reality, the viewer watching the dream begins to live in the non-existent world of the dream; and even though this dream sequence is not an accurate depiction of a dream, for the viewer, the reality of dreaming becomes something non-existent. It is taken as a fact. Blah.
I love Lynch. He is a cult figure, taken as inspiration to art students across the globe, many times cited, referenced, and homaged. But he's still cool. And through the combination of an older sister with an awesome video collection and an early childhood trauma-related fascination with the strange, I've pretty much grown up with ole Davey boy. And yes, without realizing just how much of an influence he was, I realize that he still is. Tiphaine Shipman
JOHN ISAACS
David Lynch has a talent, he also has plenty of courage to trust in this talent and do it his way through and through. As in the opening scene to Blue Velvet, in which you see in rapid succession a slow motion procession fire truck, a man mowing the perfect lawn having a heart attack, and a close up of beetles fucking in the grass. In this sequence you have the complete sense of Lynch's technique, and his appetite for exposing the fucked-up reality of the American suburban dream, as it twitches and spasms behind the curtains hung in every home down every quiet street. In his hands the perfection of the American utopia is turned into something rotting from within, populated with an invisible dread and evil. There are always bodies, or even better, bits of bodies turning up in his films. Sinister death is always lurking, mutating, or there is fear, enhanced by incredible music scores as in Twin Peaks. Eraserhead is really something that defies description; to break it down into its many parts is to kill it. It is an incredible thing in itself, almost like a self-made political agenda. In Eraserhead, as in many of his later projects, he makes films which holographically encompass every moment of themselves. I know this sounds impossible, but that's just the way it appears. In terms of pace and camera movement, his films are similar to Andrei Tarkovsky, yet from the other side of the iron curtain, from an American postmodern angle that denies such a poetic and pretentious approach, that doesn't try to fill the void with poetry. He just leaves it empty, which in the end is a void.
What's hilarious is that many people discredit his work as being pretentious, and yet to me they feel actual, honest, and as is the case with many of his characters, they reveal the ghosts that we all walk with. There are some incredible "straight" scenes where he even gets the chance to give the "conventional" movie world the finger, for instance the audition in Mulholland Drive, where you know completely that this is a master of his medium who understands how to get inside your head and flip your emotions on and off like a light switch. John Isaacs
DAVID NICHOLSON (PHOTOGRAPHED ABOVE WITH JANA WILDATHEART)
Norman Mailer said of the composer and writer Paul Bowles that he was the first to "let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the square...the call of the orgy, the end of civilization." I think Lynch has a similar sensibility and priority. For me the beginning of Blue Velvet, the opening scene with the suburban lawn and fire engine, distills the essence of his American vision. This idea that behind the domestic facade there lurks a world of monsters and deformities that are locked in conflict with our ideal of happiness. For me he's a deeply American storyteller. Places like Clarksdale, Mississippi remind me that Lynch's films are soundly rooted in truths about American culture. Such small towns are filled with local characters who on the one hand are simply pursuing their own version of our constitutionally promised happiness, and at the same time are playing out an inheritance of hatred, violence, and self deception that undermines and deforms the dream. It's in places like Clarkdale and thousands of towns like it that we find people that distort one's expectation of what a human being can be, and call to mind characters out of a Lynch film. There's a meditation spoken by the character Claggart in the film, Billy Budd as he looks out at the sea. He reflects that on the surface all is calm, yet beneath is "a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows." That line sums up Lynch in my opinion. David Nicholson
Photography Maxime Ballesteros
