In Johnny Floyd’s second solo show at Conduit Gallery, "Son Prism," is an intimate examination of resilience, restoration, and healing. Rooted in figuration, the works in "Son Prism" expand beyond traditional portraiture in an effort to amplify Floyd’s relationship to process, experimentation with fresh mediums, and the transcendent power of light and color.

Floyd, an artist working in Detroit, Michigan, started painting when it became clear that creating was the only thing that made sense. Building on a foundational academic infrastructure based in Psychology and Sociolinguistics, Floyd’s work examines the African American experience through an interrogation of both historical and current cultural phenomena while simultaneously imagining a future in which Blackness in The United States of America is a sustainable condition.

Through the melding of figurative, surrealistic, and abstracted practices, Floyd employs a broad artistic lens that coalesces into a visual language better suited to articulate this future. His practice is a process-driven meditation on an amalgamation of classical mythologies, ancestral connection, modern Black cultural artifacts, and historical record.

Floyd addresses these themes through an improvisational approach to traditional art techniques and methodologies--a process that allows him to produce works that adhere to a specific thematic/narrative arc while remaining uniquely responsive to the environment(s) in which he is creating. He strives to allow his practice to be one of resistance, recovery, and reparation.

The exhibition will remain on display through March 25.