Tyler Mitchell “Dreaming in Real Time”

Jack Shainman Gallery

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Jack Shainman Gallery presents two exhibitions by Tyler Mitchell at our Chelsea locations. These are Mitchell’s first solo exhibitions with the gallery and continue his legacy of making images that explore the histories of intimacy and meanings of home within Black communities.

Dreaming in Real Time, on view at our 20th Street gallery, is a new series by Mitchell that visualizes scenes of peace, solitude and belonging for Black people in the pastoral American South. During the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mitchell was unable to see his family in his native state of Georgia. The distance and isolation led him to start dreaming of home. When he was able to return, he created new images of subjects in the Atlanta-metro area that consider historic and contemporary notions of refuge, repose, and rootedness.

Works such as Nap and Connective Tissue hone in on intimate moments. Two pairs of feet softly and comfortably fall into each other, siblings tenderly embrace, and children jump on mattresses, while brothers wade calmly into the riverside. Mitchell also makes multiple references to the real and lived histories of redlining within Georgia that continue to this day, which both limit the mobility of Black people and actively suppress voting rights. In Georgia Hillside (Redlining) and Chalk, Mitchell’s hand is visible through his drawn demarcations on the land. Mitchell reimagines these historically divisive lines, which have become a subconscious part of Southern life, as potential pathways of navigation, connectivity, solace, and belonging.

Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995 Atlanta, GA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NL, as well as the International Center of Photography, New York, NY. He has also been included in group exhibitions at the Aperture Foundation, New York, NY, and Red Hook Labs, Brooklyn, NY. He has lectured on the politics of image-making at several institutions including Harvard University, Paris Photo, and the International Center of Photography (ICP). Mitchell was awarded the 2020 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, culminating in the exhibition mentioned above.