COMES THE SON

INTERVIEW BY DARRYL RATCLIFF

Over the past two years, Detroit artist Johnny Floyd caused quite a stir in Dallas. A sold-out show at Conduit Gallery and a bidding war at TWO x TWO, both in 2021, created a waiting list for his work. Next, he grabbed the attention of jurors tasked with the Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program led by Dallas Museum of Art’s Anna Katherine Brodbeck. Floyd’s Upon Reflection, I am Aphrodite’s Pearls Strung Across the Firmament, 2021, entered the DMA’s permanent collection.

Floyd returns to Conduit Gallery with Son Prism, on view February 18 through March 25. Darryl Ratcliff caught up with the peripatetic artist here:

Darryl Ratcliff (DR): So it’s been about a year and half since we last spoke. What’s changed for you ?

Johnny Floyd (JF): I don’t know that much has changed. After the first shows, there was a lot of hoopla. I had the piece in the TWO x TWO; there was a piece purchased by the Dallas Museum of Art. I wouldn’t say that I wasn’t expecting it, but I was surprised at the pace at which things started to move. And to be honest, it kind of put me in a place where I had to catch my breath a little bit. After my show, it took me about two months to really get back into the swing of painting regularly and having my practice on a regular cadence.

DR: We don’t talk about that a lot, what happens after the success. I felt that some last year. After I won the Rabkin Prize, I stopped writing for a bit.

JF: Yeah, why do we do that?

DR: I guess it’s the processing of new information. What did you do to catch your breath?

JF: Therapy. I was upping my frequency of therapy, which was really helpful in processing. I think that once I found my equilibrium in that respect, I was having conversations with other artists and, almost to a person, everyone was just , like, you have to work. You have to get back to the painting studio.

DR: When did you know you were back?

JF: I was actually in Northern California. It was in Guerneville, which is a small town in the Russian River Valley. I was staying with my wife at a friend’s house. They had a summer house that they weren’t using. I was painting, and I finished five pieces in a twoweek period. I was painting in their garage, essentially. When I was waking up every day, the first thing on my mind was the painting I was working on rather than I gotta get my LLC started up, do my taxes, apply to all of these residencies, which is obviously a part of the process. But I noticed that I was back when it was my work that was the main thing that I was waking up ready and excited to do.

DR: Let’s talk about geography. You’re from Detroit, you’ve been in California, you’re going to Atlanta, but you are currently in Mexico. Can you tell me a little bit about Mexico?

JF: Mexico is a place we have been coming to for the past four years. A lot of people have asked me if and how it has informed my work . I’ve always been drawn to specific colors, and a high saturation of colors is always present in my work. Here, buildings and clothing and everything around are just more colorful. So I think in that respect, just living in these environments definitely adds to my appreciation for, and understanding of the necessity of color and how I use it.

But there’s also another aspect specifically about Mexico that has been a challenge for me, and that is not being around Black people—not just for my work, but just in general , for my life and living. Even if I’m not even necessarily interacting with a bunch of people every day, just when I’m going out to the grocery store, or when I’m at the gas station, whatever. Seeing Black folks is important to me, and having those one - off conversations and hearing the language, and just being around Black folks is really important. And I didn’t notice how important it was for my work until we were spending a significant amount of time here.

DR: Can you tell me more about what materials you are playing around with?

JF: I’ve introduced different materials into the oil paint that I’ve been using—particularly wax. But let’s back up a bit. This has been a really difficult year for me. My grandmother passed, who basically raised me, and her passing created a lot of issues and problems within my family. The work I’ve made for this show is very much focused on healing and kind of transcendence and using not only my experience in creating these paintings as a means of healing , but also kind of imbuing the materials and the pieces with that energy of healing. These paintings then become kind of an instrument of passing that healing on—either to the subject I’m painting or to the people who view it. And as I’ve been going through the process of healing myself, I think that I’m learning about how layered that process is, and how deep that process is, and how the deeper you go and the more things that you start to address in your life, the more shit pops up.

So the materials I started to use… I was seeing that I was able to allow for the image, the mark-making and the images that were coming from the process of applying them to canvas was mimicking that layered process of healing. The initial pull to using different materials was attempting to force myself into an unfamiliar space in order to create something that felt both new and allowed the process to uncover whatever it is that I was attempting to say in both the piece and in my own process of using this painting as a means of healing. P

JJohn Riepenhoff’s work has been shown extensively in the US and abroad, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton. His current exhibition— Scene Painters’ Almanac —is on view at Various Small Fires through February 18 and features a series of plein air paintings that began beneath the Milwaukee night sky. Riepenhoff is also the owner and director of The Green Gallery.

Chris Byrne talks with the artist/gallerist about his time in Dallas.