KETELEER Gallery is delighted to introduce the first Belgian exhibition of the art by American artist and filmmaker David Lynch (°1946). Never before have so many of the artist’s facets been put together in one exhibition in Belgium. The gallery will be showing big historical paintings of the 80’s and 90’s, combined with recent aquarelles. His photographical works will also be featured, in a similar combination of old and new photographs. The 20 exhibited works will be shown together for the first time, giving the exhibition a retrospective character.

The exhibition’s name It was like dancing with a ghost (picture) is also the title of one of Lynch’s paintings dating from 1994. Both the work’s title as the work itself immediately submerge the spectator into the David Lynch universe. It implies feelings which can only be described as dream-images. The fine line between fiction and reality, dreams and reality. This results in uncanny yet captivating dream-images originating in the subconscious of David Lynch.

Each work is a fraction of a story, a splintered memory of a dream. For example the monumental paintings Billy finds a book of riddles in his own backyard (1992) and Shadow of a twisted hand across my house (1988, picture). Looking at these works is an eerie experience since you only get to see part of the story in the same way that remembering or telling a dream is a very  unnatural experience. What preceded this, what happened next… The brain only remembers fragments.

The dark invisible subconscious of man is being used to expose the dark underbelly of cities and our society. Bringing together sex, violence and dark humor in a unique style which David Lynch made his own. He exposes the body in its different stages of decay in a series of photographs Distorted Nudes (1999, picture). A series of digitally manipulated historical erotic photographs, it’s one of Lynch’s trademarks to transform everyday elements of American culture into strange surreal objects. These stages of decay are being translated to materials as well, like the decay of industrial sites, as seen in the Factory Photographs (1997-1998, picture).

The exhibition David Lynch – It was like dancing with a ghost, comprises 20 unique works of art by the hand of David Lynch and is the first big exhibition of his art in Belgium.