David Lynch will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Pace Gallery Berlin in January 2026. Bringing together previously works across painting, sculpture, film, and photography, the show traces the breadth of Lynch’s art practice beyond cinema.
The show will be presented in the restored gas station space that Pace opened with Galerie Judin in January and precedes a major solo exhibition for the artist at the gallery’s Los Angeles location in fall 2026.
Lynch, who died last January, is revered as one of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers of his generation. His aesthetic has even yielded its own popular term—Lynchian—referring to ordinary places and people that slowly turn strange or nightmarish. His off-kilter, surreal films, such as Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, are now household names, but the filmmaker also maintained a multidisciplinary art practice. In 2025, Lynch was the most in-demand artist on Artsy.
Lynch started his creative career as an artist. He studied at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., before transferring to the School of the Museum of the Fine Arts, Boston. He then moved to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he dropped out.
The upcoming Berlin show features never-before-seen paintings in bespoke frames made by the artist. These mixed media and watercolor works feature enigmatic images, much like scenes from his films. The show will also feature three lamp sculptures and photographs taken by Lynch during his time in Berlin in 1999.
Pace began representing Lynch in 2022, but the filmmaker’s exhibition history dates back to 1967. The artist mounted major exhibitions throughout his life, including a solo show with Leo Castelli in 1989 and a traveling exhibition starting at Paris’s Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2007. Sperone Westwater presented his work in 2019, in an exhibition titled “Squeaky Flies in the Mud.” Pace’s first show with the artist was “Big Bongo Night” in 2022. The Berlin show will run from January 29 to March 22, 2026.
