Matt Dillon opened his first solo exhibition at The Journal Gallery in New York on Friday, April 24, with a body of spontaneous, gestural paintings shaped by a 100-mile journey through Benin. The show, titled “Porto Novo to Abomey,” is now on view at 45 White Street through May 23.
The works trace Dillon’s observations of textiles, architecture and landscapes across the route from Porto Novo to Abomey, with paintings on black Masonite and repurposed notebooks giving the series a rough, collected feel. One piece turns to voodoo motifs and layers masks and tools on notepad paper, while another, “Coastal Landscape,” carries the historical weight of the coastline into the image itself.
The exhibition grew out of the period Dillon spent in Senegal in 2025 while filming Claire Denis’s “The Fence,” in which he plays an American overseeing a construction project. After the shoot, he traveled inland through Benin to the historic center of the Kingdom of Dahomey, extending a visual practice that has been building for years. Dillon, who had no formal training and was raised in an artistic household, has maintained a steady output of gallery contributions since renting his first studio in 2016.
Michael Nevin said the work is not meant to be a literal description of a place, but rather the feeling behind the work. Julia Dippelhofer described Dillon as a sponge on the road, someone who constantly collects and draws on old newspapers and found textbooks. That instinct has already shaped earlier projects, including his study of rumba and his 2020 documentary “El Gran Fellove,” which focused on Afro-Cuban jazz pioneers.
What makes “Porto Novo to Abomey” more than a travelogue is the way it reflects Dillon’s long engagement with African creative life. He is not presenting Benin as a map to be read, but as a set of impressions gathered along the way, and the show answers its own question plainly: this is the point where his work as an actor and his life as a visual artist meet in public, and the visual art now stands on its own.
