Exhibition: Dreaming in Real Time

Dreaming in Real Time
Tyler Mitchell
Jack Shainman Gallery
September 9 – October 30, 2021

Born of the sense of distance and isolation which many experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dreaming in Real Time (2021) seeks to connect Mitchell with an idealised version of his native Georgia, visually actualising a dream of home rooted in displacement and yearning. The resulting photo series offers a sensitive exploration of belonging which challenges issues of representations and race in the rural American South. Repurposing art historic imagery, Mitchell portrays his subjects as complex, emotional and profoundly beautiful beings, depicting bucolic scenes of rococo leisure and repose which subtly challenge the denied visual histories of Black American. A number of the works also display bodies and landscapes divided by lines of red and pink, an almost literal visual depiction of the practice of redlining which sadly continues in the state to this day. Yet, here these symbols of suppression and division are presented as though they were arteries or roots, repurposed by the artist in order to create new potentials for connection and belonging. Indeed, underlying the images is an almost inescapable sense of the beauty of life, a joyous celebration of those seemingly innocuous moments which define it. Nature, movement and fleeting intimacy pervade the shows imagery, captured with such candid sincerity that it’s almost impossible not to be captivated by the unabashed beauty of life. Moreover, the photographs convey a strange sense of profound yearning, drawing us to these places, these moments and instilling in us an intangible homesickness, like waking to find you’re in a world much less beautiful than your dream. In this the show perceptively exploring what it truly means to belong, offering a nuanced and deeply human look at what home really means, not only as a place but as an integral part of who we are.

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