Gallery 478

In the wake of the Val Verde project, Mitchell made a break from the singular, documentary portraits of interiors and hit the road. American Triptych feels like the road less-traveled. Formatted as triptychs, each work documents a stop along the byways of Southern and Central California with panoramic expansiveness. Mating three frames without matching creates a near-cinematic sequencing and yields unanticipated rewards: sci-fi, abandoned and absurdist dinosaurs in Cabazon, Monet-like water lilies in Echo Park, stark geometries of the California Aqueduct, and a spare Hopperesque streetscape in McFarland. Devoid of human presence, seemingly frozen in time, these contemplative images echo silence - one can almost hear the sound of the shutter.