CHADDS FORD, PA.- Opening at the Brandywine Museum of Art this fall, Jerrell Gibbs: No Solace in the Shade will survey the first decade of the career of Baltimore artist Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988). His dynamic, large-scale figurative paintings of family, friends and community focus on everyday scenes of Black life, transforming them into monumental moments that highlight the universal themes of identity, reflection and belonging. Organized by the Brandywine, this project will mark the artist’s first solo museum exhibition and first monographic publication—and is also the Museum’s first solo presentation of an emerging contemporary artist. The exhibition will feature more than 30 paintings drawn from both museum and private collections throughout the United States and Europe, and it will be on view at the Brandywine from September 28, 2025, through March 1, 2026.

Across Gibbs’s career, he has challenged the near invisibility of Black life in American art. He does so by celebrating his culture with profound compassion and insight, often weaving in narratives and images from his own upbringing. Several paintings in the exhibition represent people from the artist’s own life while others are drawn from old family photographs or feature anonymous figures found in old scrapbooks. For example, in Boy meets girl (2023), Gibbs shows both his interpretation of the found image and the plastic binding of its scrapbook setting. In his creative process, Gibbs explores questions of identity and the passage of time. He also conveys the joy and liveliness of Black life and contemplates it through positive representations in works such as The Electric Slide (2024), depicting a backyard dance party. Shifting away from menacing racial stereotypes often present in other artists’ earlier depictions of Black life—particularly images of Black men—Gibbs instead surrounds his subjects with beauty, whether it be flowering trees or lushly patterned interiors. The Black men he depicts are in repose, lost in thought, holding a bundle of flowers or planting them, as in Man with Lilacs (2021), or simply enjoying the company of family and friends. Through Gibbs’s brush, Black people are living, not just surviving.

“We are thrilled to be organizing Jerrell’s first solo museum exhibition, which has been several years in the making at Brandywine,” said Thomas Padon, the James H. Duff Director of the Brandywine Museum of Art. “Jerrell is a painter of astonishing creativity and a storyteller who crafts a world of timeless themes. His vigorous, dazzling brushwork is paired with highly personal imagery evoking contentment and joy, where ordinary moments become elemental. His work also extends and expands on, in an exciting way, the figurative tradition that is so well represented in the Brandywine’s collection, which has grown over the years to include important works by contemporary artists—including a recent acquisition of a major painting by Gibbs that will be in the exhibition.”

This exhibition is guest curated by Angela N. Carroll, a writer, art historian and professor based in Baltimore. “Anyone who experiences Jerrell’s work, virtually or in person, is moved by what they encounter,” said Carroll. “No Solace in the Shade celebrates the power of human connection, the quiet dignity of everyday life, and the beauty of family. This important survey of Gibbs’s iconic métier is an outstanding opportunity for audiences to experience his works. The presentation at the Brandywine also places him firmly in the long tradition of American figurative painters.”

Jerrell Gibbs: No Solace in the Shade is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by Rizzoli Electa and the Brandywine. The first monographic treatment of Gibbs’s work, this major publication features an essay by Carroll; a timely conversation between Gibbs and Jessica Bell Brown, Executive Director at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, about his process, style and technique; a discussion between Gibbs and Larry Ossei-Mensah, a curator and cultural critic, about cultural references and inspirations; a long-form lyrical poem in response to the artist’s “The Notes Series: Salvador Portraits” by filmmaker and poet NIA JUNE; and a photographic documentation of Gibbs’s artistic process by Washington, D.C.–based photographer Kelvin Bulluck.