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IN DREAMS
In the Village Voice, Robert Shuster reports on artist Christian Tomaszweski, who has spent three years creating a series of installations directly inspired by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. According to the article, they remake “the movie’s spaces, props, and moods, including the hallways outside Isabella Rossellini’s apartment, a scale-model view from the closet where naked Kyle MacLachlan witnesses gas-sucking Dennis Hopper commit a brutal rape, and that notorious severed ear.”
According to a press release issued by New York’s The Sculpture Center, which is exhibiting the work through July 29:
Since 2004, Christian Tomaszewski has been plunging into the entrails of David Lynch’s cult classic Blue Velvet (1986). Tomaszewski has been meticulously reconstructing parts of the film in real space: exploring the ability of architectural fragments to convey dramatic narrative. Tomaszewski is fascinated by the challenge of superimposing one space and structure onto another: the first, artificially woven together through film editing; the second, a totalizing structure defined by the walls and activities of the exhibition space. Both sets of conventions dissolve in their collision, leading to a third reality, which is a thematic structure in itself.
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As perverse as this venture seems to be, I, a big Lynch fan, will actually be more looking forward to Tomaszewski’s next project. Here’s Shuster again:
He hopes that his next major project—a series of posters for non-existent movies—”will totally confuse.” They’ll use the names of well-known directors and actors, with the usual dense small-text credits, and will appear around the city as a kind of street art, pasted up next to those advertising the real thing. “We’ll see how far we can go with it,” he says, “but it’s quite an important part of the concept. I don’t want to apply for a permit and all this. . . . I want to create a new story. I don’t just want to have posters hanging in a gallery.” Individually painted, they won’t resemble the typical American version, which Tomaszewski says, with a hint of disdain, “is always about selling the product.” Rather, he’ll draw inspiration from the Polish School of Posters—renowned in the ’60s and ’70s for their clean bold motifs—as well as other European styles that he’s meticulously researching. So look for announcements around town of a trilogy by Lynch, a mysterious tragedy called Akira, and—presented with a striking red-and-black image of a steam engine—a “hauntingly fascinating” work by the masterful Andrzej Wajda.
