August 15, The Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) invites you to our fall 2023 exhibitions, Johnny Floyd: GODBODY, curated by HMAAC’s Chief Curator Christopher Blay, and The Inaugural Bert Long Jr. Prize and exhibition announcement.

About Johnny Floyd: GODBODY

Opening: Friday, September 15

Artist Talk: Saturday, September 16, 2PM

On View: September 15 - November 18

The exhibition will open with a member preview on Friday, September 15 from 6-8PM, although all are invited! Come and learn about how to become a member. GODBODY will feature paintings Floyd has created over his brief five-year career. As with exhibitions that have come over the past 12 months from artists David-Jeremiah, Ellsworth Ausby and Evita Tezeno, this will be the first museum solo exhibition of Johnny Floyd’s paintings.

The works in Floyd’s exhibition GODBODY are a rumination on the intersection of classical mythologies, ancestral connection, and modern Black culture as artifact. Employing traditional portrait painting filtered through a surrealistic lens, Floyd interrogates notions of conventional aesthetics in the contemporary moment while centering Blackness in historical narratives that have been intentionally exclusionary for centuries. GODBODY is a reimagination of orthodox folklore of the past, a reclamation of the accounting of the present, and a consideration of the possibilities of what is to come.

In Floyd’s previous exhibition at Conduit Gallery, titled Hyperblack Spectacle, of which some paintings are included in the HMAAC exhibition, “the paintings sprang from a thought experiment: What if Black Bodies were phenotypically presented through a visual language that more accurately presented the dynamic and improvisational nature of Blackness? What happens to the Black figure if it is allowed to exist outside the conventions created to stifle and strip away the profound beauty that is inherent in the Black experience? What if we brought forth the all-encompassing prismatic nature of Blackness as both a color and a cultural identity to the surface? Hyperblack Spectacle emerges humbly and simply as one of the infinite answers to these questions.” -Conduit Gallery, Dallas.

“Floyd’s work is an important tributary that branches off into the rich variety of Black Figurative aesthetics over the past decade,” Blay stated. “His paintings oscillate between the shallowest washing of paint and brushstrokes to impasto and almost fresco-like surfaces of vibrant, exaggerated, colors that vibrate with exuberance and melancholy.”

About the Inaugural Bert Long Jr. Prize.

Prize: $3,000 and a solo exhibition in the Bert Long Jr. Gallery at HMAAC

Opening: Saturday, September 16, 3-5PM

Artist Talk: September 16, 4PM

The Houston Museum of African American Culture is excited to announce the Inaugural Bert Long Jr. Prize. The Award was established in honor of the late Bert Long Jr. whose artistic legacy is one celebrated in Houston and beyond. The prize includes a $3,000 cash award and a solo exhibition in the Bert Long Jr. Gallery at HMAAC.

Artist David Stunts was selected by curator Blay, Houston-based artists Eddie Filer, and Romeo Robinson, who served the Bert Long Gallery tirelessly since its inception. David was selected from the eight artists participating in the inaugural Bert Long Jr. Gallery Spring Survey Exhibition in April, curated by HMAAC’s Chief Curator Christopher Blay. The show featured an incredible breadth of talent from Kaima Marie Akarue, Saran Alderson, Crystal Coulter, Mark Francis, Preston Gaines, Lamonte French, Catherine Martinez, and Stunts. Although any one of these artists could easily have been selected for the prize, the panelists agreed that Stunts, a self-taught artist whose lens has long focused on the city he knows and loves, was the most attuned to the spirit of the prize. For Spring, 2024 and beyond, HMAAC will offer an open call to Houston-based artists and the prize will be juried by curator Blay and two invited curators.

"It is quite an honor to carry on the legacy of Bert Long as HMAAC's Chief Curator. Although I never met Bert, I feel I've come to know him through the many artists whose lives he affected here in Houston and beyond. Working with two such artists, Eddie Filer and Romeo Robinson to select the winner was an important part of extending that legacy.

“It means so much for the Museum of African American Culture to establish this Bert Long Jr. Prize for local artists because it continues Bert’s support for upcoming artists,” Said HMAAC’s CEO John Guess Jr. “In a career characterized by achievement, recognition and acclaim, Bert for Houstonians was a heartwarming figure accessible to emerging artists and a friend to many others. Bert's life inspires anyone who becomes familiar with it, Guess continued. “There was a bit of surprise that the Prize Jurors, HMAAC Chief Curator Christopher Blay, Romeo Robinson and Eddie Filer selected David Stunts, a video artist outside of the academy and embedded in the community for this first Prize, when actually there should not have been,” Guess said. “Bert began as an outsider, a self taught artist working in multiple mediums, who was so much a part of the Houston community, and this first award to David Stunts certainly, I think, would be pleasing to him."

“Upon entering the Gallery earlier this Spring, I was immediately taken in by David Stunts’ storytelling,” stated juror Filer. I think David’s way of telling a story would make a wonderful exhibition because I’ve never seen an exhibition solely anchored by video. It would be fresh to me, and definitely new to HMAAC. Hearing an artist talk about their work, or talk within their work, and seeing the story unfold on screen gives the viewer a different way to interpret and get an understanding of visual images.

About David Stunts

David Stunts is a photographer, filmmaker, and artist based in Houston, Texas, and is best known for creating the blueprint for the utility cameraman in Houston's hip/hop community. Also known for his distinct, behind-the-scenes documentation of slab culture and his commercial work, David was also instrumental in bringing Anthony Bourdain and CNN to Houston to document Slab Culture in 2016. David has documented celebrities within the film and hip-hop industries and his images have been featured in magazines, and on album covers across the country. David is also known for directing several music videos for artists such as Bun B, Boss Hogg Outlawz, Killa Kyleon, Stephan Jackson (stak5), Steak and Shrimp, and several others.

Johnny Floyd:GODBODY is made possible through our generous sponsors who include The Stardust Fund, The Houston Endowment, Jones Walker LLP, H.E.B, Harrison Barnes Foundation, as well as the Board of Directors at HMAAC. Special thanks to Bert Long, Jr. Estate, Deborah Colton Gallery, and Chauncy Glover for their support of the inaugural Bert Long, Jr. Prize.

Become a member of HMAAC Today! To become a member and enjoy the benefit of our Member Preview Reception before each exhibition, please click on the membership link in bio or visit our website at www.hmaac.org.

About Johnny Floyd

Johnny Floyd (b. 1984) is an artist from Detroit, MI. working in Atlanta, Georgia. He 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.