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These spookily plaintive lullabies — interpreted by Suzanne Vega, Wayne Coyne, Iggy Pop and a host of other luminaries — come drenched in busy atmospherics from a union of two producers not known for their sonic restraint. Beneath this effect/affect-laden barrage, the lyrics are hard to make out, and to an ear unattuned to indie-rock refinements it all sounds the same. It doesn't help that the speakers aren't turned up loud enough and that there are no restrictions on incidental noise in the gallery setting. On the afternoon I was there, it was difficult to focus on any connection that might have existed between visuals and audio owing to the whiny voices and sloppy diction of a couple of industry bottom-feeders wandering around the gallery, loudly and lengthily discussing the difficulty of getting their scripts read by the producers of Entourage.
The songs, judging by such titles as "Pain" and "Grim Augury," address "the dark side." Hence the participation of Lynch, whose photographs decorate the gallery in groups of three or four. The works, featuring models in posed set-ups, are all saturated in recognizably Lynchian color schemes. The usual formula is that three images carry a somewhat visible thread, while the fourth surprises.
There are a few departures here, or at least one. "Star Eyes" is straight street photography. It consists of three stark black-and-white portraits of homeless people. The fourth reveals a pinup of a starlet staring lasciviously from a trash-filled shopping cart. Here, he seems to be making some sort of statement. But mostly he adheres to the trusted formula of eerie absurdities, dream puzzles, shady imbroglios and mysterious juxtapositions. On his most familiar terrain, suburban noir, he captures the menace behind the meaningless and the ominous in the innocuous. A happy couple are pictured hugging on their lawn. But subsequent shots show an unmade bed, a bedside table overflowing with pill bottles, and to crown this sequence, a shot of light falling on a surge protector.
Where the light falls or strikes in an otherwise ordinary scene implies significance — those sinister flickerings so familiar from his movies — as does blurriness, a frequent device, employed by screwing with the focus switch, as in the case of "Just War," a series that depicts a child at play in a backyard patch of impoverished sod. The dolls, which look disfigured or diseased, become swept up in a blur. Something nasty is happening. Perhaps the fuzzy little tiger is responsible: It's the only figure left in the final frame.
And these images do appear as frames, deficiently static, a primitive or stripped-down form of cinema, stills with a soundtrack, requiring the fluidity of film to hold them together. Fill in the gaps: In "Insane Lullaby" a smiling man soars through a sky filled with Christmas tree baubles. His face then dissolves in a kaleidoscope of shattered glass. In the final shot, a plastic toy lamb shines in the palm of an outstretched hand, in the style of Mulholland Drive — or any of Lynch's last four or five films (it's hard to tell them apart). The suggestion that anything might be going on beyond or beneath the cryptic imagery is apparently enough to sustain them.
Lynch is a distinctive stylist with a refreshing disregard for such extraneous fluff as conventional narrative and reliable characterization. He has a unique handle on what film should be: all mood and visuals, a jolt to the senses. For a long time he's been veering dangerously close to self-parody, but having already presented the world with at least two genuine masterpieces, he has earned the right to repeat himself, and watching him do so, which he seems to be doing here, is more entertaining than watching the innovations of most artists.
And it's a great idea, this merging of sound and vision. We could certainly do with more exhibitions of this kind. How about pairing Gordon Matta-Clark with Einsturzende Neubauten, Kara Walker with Al Jolson, Ad Reinhardt with John Cage?
"Dark Night of the Soul" was exhibited at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA, which ended in August. ■