Pace Gallery Berlin to Present Major David Lynch Exhibition
Pace Gallery will present a comprehensive exhibition of work by the late David Lynch at its Berlin location from January 29 through March 22, 2026. The show, housed at Die Tankstelle on Bülowstraße 18, will bring together paintings, sculptures, watercolours, early short films, and a series of photographs taken in the German capital.
Lynch, who passed away in 2025, is widely recognised as one of the foremost creative minds of his generation. Though celebrated for his cinematic achievements, Lynch considered himself a visual artist first, having studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the late 1960s. It was during this period that he created his first “moving painting,” the multimedia work Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) in 1967, fusing painting with projection in an approach that would define his artistic practice.
The Berlin exhibition will showcase the full range of Lynch’s visual work. His paintings, characterised by unsettling and enigmatic imagery, draw from Surrealism while incorporating text and narrative elements that speak to the subconscious realities of contemporary life. The watercolours, rendered in both monochrome and Lynch’s signature palette of reds, inky blues, and bursts of yellow, will be displayed alongside the paintings, all housed in frames designed by the artist himself. Three sculptural lamps made of steel, resin, plexiglass, plaster, and wood will punctuate the space with their uncanny illumination.
David Lynch, Tree at Night, 2019, © The David Lynch Estate, courtesy Pace Gallery
Of particular note are Lynch’s photographs from Berlin, taken at abandoned industrial sites throughout the city in 1999. Known as the factory photographs, this series captures his fascination with the aesthetic beauty of urban decay: smokestacks, chimneys, broken windows, and heavy machinery. These images reflect Lynch’s ability to find beauty in strange visual juxtapositions and decaying landscapes, a sensibility that informed much of his artistic output.
The Berlin presentation will precede a major exhibition of Lynch’s work scheduled for fall 2026 at Pace’s Los Angeles gallery, in the artist’s hometown. Lynch’s exhibition history spans nearly six decades, including notable shows at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1989 and the Fondation Cartier’s comprehensive 2007 retrospective The Air Is on Fire, which traveled to multiple cities.
The largest presentation to date was Someone Is in My House at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht in 2018, featuring over 500 artworks.
Editor in Chief of Ikon London Magazine, journalist, film producer and founder of The DAFTA Film Awards (The DAFTAs).