The Spirit Lamp

What is it?

A limited-run performance of songs written by David Lynch and Chrystabell, with Chrystabell performing the material to tracks of David’s instrumentation, enveloped in the stunning organic images created specifically for The Spirit Lamp by internationally-renowned experimental filmmaker David Gatten.

The performance begins with three minutes of David Lynch’s voice, introducing Chrystabell in the form of a love story.

The Spirit Lamp premiered at the official David Lynch Tribute at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and has a limited run of 22 performances.

After these shows, there will be no further performances of The Spirit Lamp.

Who is the show for?

This is an immersive aural and visual meditation to celebrate Lynch’s musical legacy through the conduit of Chrystabell, his dear friend and artistic collaborator of 25 years.

The Spirit Lamp fills the timely need and desire that fans, followers, and scholars of David Lynch have to come together to honour, celebrate and grieve the loss of this multi-faceted creative genius who, for nearly five decades, has been and continues to be an inspiration to artists and art lovers all over the world.

Why Chrystabell?

“I love Chrystabell.” - David Lynch

Chrystabell

Chrystabell is a singer, musician, and actor, performing onstage since the age of seven.

Since 2011 she has headlined tours in over 40 countries and more than 100 cities while releasing seven critically acclaimed albums. Her deeply expressive voice and striking visual presence caught and held the attention of legendary artist David Lynch, who championed her and served as co-writer and producer on three of her albums.

A starring role as Special Agent Tammy Preston in Lynch’s 2017 Twin Peaks: The Return marked her first foray as a professional television actor, acting alongside Lynch, Laura Dern, and Miguel Ferrer in what Time Magazine hailed as “the best TV show of the decade.”

Most recently she is the star of “Cosmic Crown” (2023), a short film exploring consciousness and sacred sexuality.

Chrystabell and Lynch appeared on the cover of the August 2024 issue of The Wire, celebrating Cellophane Memories, the final album that they made together, released on Sacred Bones records. David Lynch directed music videos for two of their songs from the album, both starring Chrystabell: “Answers to the Questions” and “Sublime Eternal Love.”

Chrystabell has appeared in a wide array of print and digital publications, Including Vogue Italia, Interview, Rolling Stone, LA Times, The Observer, The Guardian, Pitch-fork, Texas Monthly, W, Modzik, Dazed and Confused, FLOOD, Grazia, Numero, Nowness, and more.

She is featured in the June 2025 print issue of Vanity Fair in an article by editor Mike Hogan titled “As Twin Peaks Turns 35, the Mystery Is Still the Message for a World of Fans” with images of her by David Lynch and Elias Tahan.

“Chrystabell looks like a dream and sounds like a dream, and the dream is coming true.” - David Lynch

David Gatten

"The films of David Gatten brand the brain and the retina with equal force. They consist partly of cerebral puzzles and partly of lyrical reveries, and their central drama lies in the space between, where facts transform into poetry and transient experiences are assimilated into systems of knowledge. As they construct around them gigantic conceptual edifices, his films contain sequences that decompose mental activity, obliterate the formation of thoughts. No Hollywood director, no matter how big their budget, offers images as carefully calibrated as Gatten’s."

– Tom McCormack, Moving Image Source

Since 1992, the films of David Gatten have consistently explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image. These movies measure the movement of desire across distance, and the manner in which books, letters, telegrams, and other written, printed, or electronic communications might both produce and mediate that distance.

A 2005 Guggenheim Fellow, Gatten's films have received over 120 international solo exhibitions, and screened in over 1100 film festivals and group shows around the world. A 2010 Film Comment critics’ poll of artists cinema in the 21st c. placed Gatten within the top ten filmmakers, and included three of his films in a list of the fifty best individual works of the decade. In 2021 The Extravagant Shadows was named the "Best Experimental Feature Film of the Decade 2011-2020" in the journal Senses of Cinema.

His films have been included twice in the Whitney Biennial (2002, 2006), as well as in the exhibition "The American Century: Art & Culture, 1900-2000" at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His most recent feature-length work premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC in 2021.

Since 2012 major retrospectives of Gatten’s films have been mounted by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; SF MoMA; Wexner Center for the Arts; Los Angeles Film Forum; Harvard Film Archive; Austrian Film Museum; Nation Film Archive of the Czech Republic, Prague; Irish Film Institute, Dublin; Festival International de Cine de Gijon, Spain; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; La Région Central, Santiago, Chile, and a number of universities in North America and Europe.

Significant recent screenings include festivals in London, Toronto, Rotterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Bangkok, Tokyo, and exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London; ICA-London; Cinémathèque Française, Paris; Anthology Film Archives, Gladstone Gallery, and Exit Art, NYC; Pierogi, Brooklyn; Paul Young Projects, LA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Gatten's work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), British Film Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Austrian Film Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Cinémathèque Française, Harvard Film Archive, as well as in a variety of public and private collections.

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