{"id":205482,"date":"2026-04-26T04:21:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T04:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/205482\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T04:21:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T04:21:45","slug":"matt-dillons-new-paintings-trace-a-journey-across-west-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/205482\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Dillon\u2019s New Paintings Trace a Journey Across West Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little over a decade ago, the actor Matt Dillon was at a friend\u2019s apartment when he started doodling with crayons left out for children. Soon, his kitchen counter had become a workshop. By 2016, he was renting a studio to paint in. Despite having little formal training himself, Dillon grew up in an artistic family (his father and grandmother were portrait painters and his great-uncle created Flash Gordon) and inherited a love<\/a> for image-making.<\/p>\n

Dillon\u2019s style that has emerged in a steady clip of gallery exhibitions in recent years is spontaneous, textured, and gestural. He paints bold, flat works marked with mercurial figures, recurring symbols, and unexplained words. When on set and away from the studio, Dillon makes do with what\u2019s at hand, lathering acrylic on loose paper and repurposed notebooks. The practice is on show in his first solo show at The Journal Gallery<\/a> in New York, \u201cPorto Novo to Abomey,\u201d which opens April 24.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Installation view of \u201cPorto Novo to Abomey.\u201d Photo: courtesy The Journal Gallery\/Guang Xu.<\/p>\n

The series of paintings was born while Dillon was in Senegal for Claire Denis\u2019s The Fence (2025) in which he played Horn, an embattled American who is overseeing a controversial construction project in an unnamed West African country. After filming, he travelled through Benin encountering textiles, architectures, landscapes, and people that proved rich source material. The show\u2019s title traces the 100-mile journey inland from the country\u2019s modern-day capital to the center of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Back in New York, he scrawled the place names on a piece of black Masonite, which has been installed in the gallery\u2019s window.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Matt Dillon, Porto Novo to Abomey (2026). Photo courtesy the artist and The Journal Gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not meant to be a literal description of the work or place, but rather the feeling behind the work,\u201d the gallery\u2019s co-founder, Michael Nevin, said over email.<\/p>\n

That feeling is one of lingering images being flattened and cast loosely in paint. An ungainly cat in flight rendered in stark black outline, a stack of luminous orange cinderblocks against a wall, the sea in green and laid on a weathered pink background. One work centers on voodoo, which partly originated in the Kingdom of Dahomey, layering mask and tools on lined notepad paper.<\/p>\n

Another two are named Coastal Landscape: the first offers a block of black for sea and sand with tree branches hanging like teeth, while the second shapes an uneasy and haggard figure. Intentional or otherwise, it\u2019s hard not to think of the untold millions who departed the coastline enslaved.<\/p>\n

\"Abstract<\/p>\n

Matt Dillon, Untitled (2025). Photo courtesy of The Journal Gallery.<\/p>\n

Previously, Dillon\u2019s relationship to this part of the world has largely come through music. He\u2019s studied rumba and guaguanc\u00f3, boasts a vast collection of Afro-Cuban records, and made El Gran Fellove (2020), a documentary about Francisco Fellove, a pioneer who combined Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz in the 1950s. Nevin said this background ultimately inspired and guided Dillon\u2019s road-trip through Benin.<\/p>\n

\u201cMatt is always drawing, collaging, collecting, writing on the road. He will pick up found textbooks or old newspapers to be repurposed as sketchbooks,\u201d Julia Dippelhofer, the gallery\u2019s other co-founder said. \u201cHe is like a sponge and a great storyteller.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMatt Dillon: Porto Novo to Abomey\u201d is on view at The Journal Gallery, 45 White Street, New York, April 24\u2013May 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A little over a decade ago, the actor Matt Dillon was at a friend\u2019s apartment when he started…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[105025,63,105026,105030,654,21945,331,105023,105021,89002,105028,105020,105022,105024,105029,105019,103507,105027,325],"class_list":["post-205482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa","tag-acrylic","tag-africa","tag-afro-cuban","tag-artnet-news","tag-benin","tag-exhibitions","tag-film","tag-gestural","tag-kingdom-of-dahomey","tag-matt-dillon","tag-paintings","tag-porto-novo-to-abomey","tag-solo-exhibition","tag-spontaneous","tag-story-telling","tag-the-journal-gallery","tag-tribeca","tag-voodoo","tag-west-africa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/116469097188840173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}