From I CAN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD © Tyler Mitchell
Isolde Brielmaier, faculty in the NYU Tisch Department of Photography & Imaging, is curator of NYU Tisch alum Tyler Mitchell's (UG Film & TV '17) first ever U.S. solo exhibition, I CAN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD. The show will have a press preview and reception on January 23, 2020, 6-8pm, and open to the public January 25 through May 18, 2020.
From Tyler Mitchell's artist statement: "I often think about what white fun looks like, and this notion that Black people can’t have the same. Growing up with Tumblr, I would often come across images of sensual, young, attractive white models running around being free and having so much fun—the kind of stuff Larry Clark and Ryan McGinley would make. I seldom saw that freedom for Black people in images—or at least in the photography I knew. My work responds to this lack. I feel an urgency to visualize Black people as free, expressive, effortless, and sensitive.
I aim to visualize what a Black utopia looks like or could look like. People say utopia is never achievable, but I love the possibility that photography brings. It allows me to dream and make that dream become very real."