David Lynch: Up in Flames
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague
Through 8 February 2026
Photo by Karel Cudlin
© 400 ASA
Man Laughing, 2013
DOX, Up In Flames Exhibition
© The David Lynch Estate, Courtesy Item éditions, Paris
Playing with Fire, 2015
DOX, Up In Flames Exhibition
© The David Lynch Estate, Courtesy Item éditions, Paris
The DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, the Czech Republic’s largest institution dedicated to contemporary art, presents the exhibition event of the year in its main hall: artistic work of American master of cinema DAVID LYNCH.
The project, on which DOX is collaborating with the David Lynch Estate, Pace Gallery, and Item éditions, is curated by Otto M. Urban. David Lynch: Up in Flames is the first presentation of Lynch’s art in the Czech Republic.
In the main spaces of DOX over four hundred works of art are on display – from drawings, photographs, lithographs, woodcuts, and watercolours to short experimental and animated films created by the director. The works span all of Lynch’s creative periods, from his early days in the late 1960s all the way to 2024.
“I consider it a small miracle that we are finally opening the exhibition. Without the enthusiastic cooperation of everyone involved, we could not have pulled off a project like this. Unfortunately, David Lynch, who oversaw the preparations for the exhibition from the very beginning, will not see the final result. Nevertheless, I hope that he would be satisfied with the exhibition, which I see as a tribute to a great artist and a great man,” says Otto M. Urban, the curator of the exhibition.
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
Deliberations regarding the project gradually developed over many years, and an important condition for its realisation was establishing direct contact with the artist himself. The first serious discussions about a David Lynch exhibition at DOX took place in the spring of 2024, when the David Lynch Studio (now the David Lynch Estate) and Pace Gallery joined the project. Patrice Forest of Item éditions in Paris was instrumental in facilitating this connection.
However, the preparations were unexpectedly interrupted by the news of David Lynch’s sudden passing on 16 January.
“David and I spoke about this show the day before he passed. He loved the images he’d seen of DOX and was looking forward to seeing his art in that space. He had confidence in Otto, and he was excited to share his work with the people of Prague. When he died, it seemed like the world stopped turning,” says Michael T. Barile from the David Lynch Estate.
My House is on Fire - Modern Device, 2013
DOX, Up In Flames Exhibition
© The David Lynch Estate, Courtesy Item éditions, Paris
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
David Lynch - Works on paper
The main axis of the exhibition consists of works on paper, which Lynch considered to be autonomous artworks in their own right. He said that drawing helped him to capture ideas that he could later develop into films, paintings, or objects.
David Lynch studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It was there that he had a vision of a moving painting, and in 1967 this vision became the basis for his first film, Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). Lynch drew throughout his career, and in his artistic work he was fascinated by all manner of different materials and surfaces.
A major part of the exhibition consists of works on loan directly from the David Lynch Estate in Los Angeles, but the project also includes a number of works (lithographs and photographs) which he created at Item éditions in Paris.
Small Stories, 2014
DOX, Up In Flames Exhibition
© The David Lynch Estate, Courtesy Item éditions, Paris
Small Stories, 2014
DOX, Up In Flames Exhibition
© The David Lynch Estate, Courtesy Item éditions, Paris
View into the exhibition Up in Flames, DOX, Prague
Photo Jan Slavik © DOX
Artist David Lynch
David Lynch (1946–2025) had a prolific nearly six-decade-long career, which spanned an extensive range of artmaking, including painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, music, and film.
He wrote and directed critically acclaimed films such as Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), Inland Empire (2006), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990–91) and Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). While studying painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, David Lynch envisioned his first “moving painting”, a multidimensional composition beneath a moving projection titled Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1967). This multimedia work marked Lynch’s first foray into video and filmmaking. His remarkable career touched on subjects of the organic body and industrial sites in various states of decay, describing a deeper human experience both beyond and within the everyday. Often depicting scenes with an eye towards surrealism and mystery, Lynch’s work balanced on the porous divide between the body and the world it inhabits.
Lynch’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions. Retrospectives of his work include The Air Is on Fire: 40 years of Paintings, Photographs, Drawings, Experimental Films, and Sound Creations at Fondation Cartier in Paris (2007), which then travelled to La Triennale di Milano (2008), the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation in Moscow (2009), and Gammel Strand in Copenhagen (2011); Between Two Worlds at QAGOMA in Brisbane, Australia (2015); Silence and Dynamism at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń, Poland (2017–18); and Someone Is in My House at the Bonnefanten in Maastricht, Netherlands (2018–19). In 2014, a survey of Lynch’s work entitled The Unified Field was presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where the artist previously studied painting.
David Lynch: Up in Flames - Organisational Team
The exhibition Up in Flames is curated by Otto M. Urban. The organisational team consists of Leoš Válka, Michaela Šilpochová, Jan Slavík, and Anna Bárová from DOX, Anna Skarbek and Michael T. Barile from the David Lynch Estate, and Genevieve Day from Pace Gallery.
Michael T. Barile and Anna Skarbek from the David Lynch Estate and Patrice Forest from Item éditions in Paris made significant contributions to the exhibition. Michael T. Barile, Anna Skarbek, and Patrice Forest were the guests of honour at the exhibition’s opening ceremony. The graphic design of the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue was entrusted to Robert V. Novák. The music was arranged by Marcel Bárta.
Authors of the exhibition David Lynch: Up in Flames
DOX, Exhibition David Lynch, Up in Flames
Photo Jan Slavík © DOX
Otto M. Urban – Head curator of the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, where he has prepared numerous exhibitions, including his latest project, David Lynch: Up in Flames. Since the early 1990s O tto M.Urban has focused on Czech and international art from the turn of the twentieth century, especially symbolism and decadence, as well as contemporary art.
DOX, Exhibition David Lynch, Up in Flames
Photo Jan Slavík © DOX
Michael T. Barile – Executive assistant to David Lynch and employee at Asymmetrical Productions from 2008 to 2025. Michael T. Barile is an American film producer and writer who worked on several of Lynch’s projects, including Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), Twin Peaks: Missing Pieces (2014), and What Did Jack Do? (2017) as well as numerous other commercials, music videos, and short films. He currently works for the David Lynch Estate.
DOX, Exhibition David Lynch, Up in Flames
Photo Tomáš Cindr © DOX
Anna Skarbek – An American visual artist and educator who began working with David Lynch as assistant art director on his 2006 film INLAND EMPIRE. She subsequently worked with him on commercials, music videos, and experimental films, and she built and maintains the database that inventories all of Lynch’s artworks. Anna Skarbek has organised fifteen international museum exhibitions of Lynch’s work, overseen forty gallery exhibitions, and co-edited twelve accompanying exhibition catalogues.
DOX, Exhibition David Lynch, Up in Flames
Photo Tomáš Cindr © DOX
Patrice Forest – A close friend of David Lynch and director of the Item éditions lithographic studio in Paris. In 2007 Patrice Forest initiated David Lynch into the secrets of lithography during the time that Lynch was creating nearly three hundred works in the studio. Item éditions is the oldest lithographic studio in Paris, with presses used in the past by Picasso, Matisse, and Giacometti, to name just a few. The exhibition includes not only a large set of lithographs from Lynch’s production at Item éditions but also two photographic series of gelatin silver prints on Baryta paper titled Small Stories.
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1, Prague 7
David Lynch: Up in Flames
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, 19 june - 8 February 2026
