Wild At Heart

There are few places more fascinating than the mind of David Lynch, and you'll find it in Paris this spring. Until May 27, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art presents "The Air Is on Fire," an exhibit featuring artistic works from the enigmatic American filmmaker of Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr.

Long before making a name for himself as a director with his disconcertingly dark vision and cryptic storytelling style, the 61-year-old Lynch was an artist. After spending his childhood and teen years painting and sketching, Lynch enrolled to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1965, where his interest then turned to the moving image.

Spanning back to his youth, the exhibit showcases some 500 drawings and sketches (most kept for years in unopened boxes and cupboards), more than 130 photographs, and 35 paintings, like the watercolor Rain (2005), above. From cheeky doodles in pencil and pen and complex geometric shapes on matchbook covers, to black-and-white photographs of abandoned factories and digitally reworked 19th and 20th century nudes, a portrait emerges of a man fascinated by the emotional response to the physical world and the human form. The exhibit seems to have given Lynch a creative jolt as well (not that he needed one): "When I saw all this stuff again, I got inspired for some new things by the old." In addition, several short films will run on a loop, and there will be an interactive soundscape filling the exhibition space that combines Lynch's own engineered audio textures with sounds that patrons can add to the mix, resulting in a one-of-a-kind soundtrack.

With so many of these works being shown publicly for the first time, film and art fans will get a good look at how the quotidian inspires this multimedia auteur's wild imagination. Says Lynch, "I just want people to have an experience." Indeed we will. www.fondation.cartier.com