Key Takeaways
- Matt Dillon’s artistic habit started with casual crayon doodles and grew into a dedicated studio practice by 2016, despite no formal training.
- He comes from a lineage of visual artists (father, grandmother, great‑uncle) that fostered his love for image‑making.
- His current work is spontaneous, gestural, and textured, featuring bold flat forms, recurring symbols, and enigmatic words painted on unconventional supports such as loose paper, repurposed notebooks, and Masonite.
- The solo show “Porto Novo to Abomey” (April 24–May 23, The Journal Gallery, New York) originates from Dillon’s 2025 film shoot in Senegal for Claire Denis’s The Fence and a subsequent road‑trip through Benin.
- The exhibition title references the 100‑mile inland journey from Porto‑Novo (Benin’s modern capital) to the historic heart of the Kingdom of Dahomey, a route Dillon marked on a black Masonite panel installed in the gallery window.
- Recurrent imagery includes a black‑outlined cat in flight, stacked orange cinderblocks, sea‑green washes, and voodoo‑related motifs that allude to Dahomey’s spiritual heritage.
- Two works titled “Coastal Landscape” juxtapose stark seascapes with anguished figures, evoking the forced migrations of the trans‑Atlantic slave trade.
- Before turning to paint, Dillon engaged with West African culture through music—rumba, guaguancó, Afro‑Cuban records—and his 2020 documentary El Gran Fellove about musician Francisco Fellove.
- Gallery co‑founders describe him as a perpetual collector and storyteller who constantly draws, collages, and writes on the road, treating found materials as sketchbooks.
- The show invites viewers to experience, rather than decode, the lingering impressions of landscape, memory, and history that Dillon translates into paint.
Matt Dillon’s journey into painting began inconspicuously over a decade ago when he picked up crayons left for children at a friend’s apartment. What started as idle doodling soon colonized his kitchen counter, and by 2016 he had secured a dedicated studio space. Although Dillon never pursued formal art instruction, he was raised in a family steeped in visual tradition—his father and grandmother were portrait painters, and his great‑uncle created the Flash Gordon comic strip. This hereditary exposure nurtured an innate sensitivity to image‑making that would later manifest in a distinctive, impulsive style.
Working largely with acrylic, Dillon’s approach is spontaneous and gestural. He favors bold, flat compositions punctuated by mercurial figures, recurring symbols, and fragments of text that resist straightforward interpretation. When he is on a film set and away from the studio, he adapts by painting on whatever is at hand—loose sheets of paper, old notebooks, or any scrap surface—turning everyday detritus into impromptu sketchbooks. This habit of repurposing found materials underscores his belief that art can emerge from the most ordinary circumstances.
The body of work comprising “Porto Novo to Abomey” was conceived during Dillon’s involvement in Claire Denis’s 2025 film The Fence, where he portrayed Horn, an American overseeing a controversial construction project in an unnamed West African nation. After wrapping production in Senegal, Dillon embarked on a road‑trip through Benin, absorbing the country’s textiles, architecture, landscapes, and the rhythms of daily life. These sensory encounters became the wellspring for his paintings. Back in New York, he distilled the experience by inscribing the place names “Porto Novo” and “Abomey” on a piece of black Masonite, which now occupies the gallery’s window as a conceptual anchor for the show.
The exhibition’s title does not aim to give a literal account of the route or the locations visited; rather, it seeks to convey the feeling that lingered after Dillon’s journey. As gallery co‑founder Michael Nevin explained, the show captures “the feeling behind the work”—a sense of images being flattened, stretched, and loosely cast in paint. This ethos is evident in several pieces: an ungainly cat rendered in a stark black outline appears to be in flight; a stack of luminous orange cinderblocks leans against a wall, their hue contrasting with a weathered pink backdrop; and the sea is rendered in translucent green washes that seem to melt into the background. One work explicitly engages with voodoo, a spiritual tradition that traces its roots to the Kingdom of Dahomey, layering masks and ritual implements onto lined notepad paper.
Two paintings share the title “Coastal Landscape.” The first presents a block of black to evoke sea and sand, with twisted tree branches dangling like jagged teeth, while the second renders an uneasy, haggard figure that seems to emerge from the shoreline. The juxtaposition of stark maritime forms with tormented human silhouettes inevitably summons the memory of the millions expelled from that very coast during the trans‑Atlantic slave trade—a haunting subtext that Dillon lets viewers feel rather than read.
Before his foray into painting, Dillon’s relationship with West African culture was primarily auditory. He has studied rumba and guaguancó, amassed a considerable collection of Afro‑Cuban records, and directed the 2020 documentary El Gran Fellove, which chronicles musician Francisco Fellove’s fusion of Afro‑Cuban rhythms with jazz. According to Nevin, this musical background supplied the emotional and rhythmic undercurrent that guided Dillon’s Beninese road‑trip. Fellow co‑founder Julia Dippelhofer echoed this sentiment, describing Dillon as “a sponge and a great storyteller” who constantly draws, collages, collects, and writes while on the move, turning discovered textbooks and newspapers into impromptu sketchbooks.
“Matt Dillon: Porto Novo to Abomey” will be on view at The Journal Gallery, 45 White Street, New York, from April 24 through May 23, offering audiences a chance to experience the artist’s visceral, material‑rich response to a landscape that is at once geographic, historical, and deeply personal.