Enigma: The Prints Of David Lynch gallery reception & David Lynch: The Art Life screening at Tandem Press

Excerpt from Jason Fuhrman’s article: In conjunction with a reception for Enigma on Friday, September 23, starting at 5 p.m., Tandem Press will also host an outdoor screening of the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life (2016), co-directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm. The movie screening will begin at 7 p.m. on the lawn in front of the Apex building where Tandem is located on the North Side. Guests are encouraged to bring blankets or chairs.

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Lynch worked closely with Tandem master printers Andy Rubin and Bruce Crownover and a group of graduate students to create several monotypes, editioned prints, and photogravures. Lynch returned to the studio in the summers of 1998, 1999, and 2001, and worked with the press remotely from 2007 to 2008. By all accounts, Lynch left the imprint of his eccentric personality on Tandem.

The predominantly monochromatic exhibition parallels Lynch’s cinema insofar as the meaning of the work remains obscure, but the power of his images cannot be denied. Lynch’s films compel audiences to watch differently—they often feel like paintings that are meant to be experienced, rather than explained. Similarly, the recurring motifs, rich symbolism, and dreamlike textures of his prints imbue the work with a distinctively narrative quality.

David Lynch: The Art Life screening alongside the reception for the Engima exhibition feels like the perfect pairing. The documentary plainly demonstrates how Lynch has always been a tactile artist while he manipulates various materials with his bare hands and leisurely performs manual labor. While few of Lynch’s films are actually mentioned in The Art Life, it emphasizes the myriad intricate connections between his various pursuits, and suggests that cinema represents just one facet of his vision.