Thomas Broadbent “Phylum”

Front Room Gallery

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Front Room Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Thomas Broadbent. In the exhibition “Phylum.” Broadbent’s philosophical compositions often depict birds amongst mundane trappings of everyday humanity. These paintings, in a seemingly well structured world of man-made artifice, reference the underlying impulses of nature.

Broadbent’s large-scale watercolors have an absurdity to them that borders on the surreal, they are plausible scenarios, but the unlikely combination of elements, objects, and animals are otherworldly and common at the same time. Broadbent’s birds are rendered sensitively with a naturalist’s eye for detail often in conjunction with objects such as stacks of books, Modernist furniture, and ladders.

These objects could possibly be looked at as stand-ins for society in an ambiguous relationship with nature that is absurd—and yet peculiarly comfortable. His beautifully rendered astrological bodies might question the core of our existence, our evolution as a planet. Or perhaps they are simply representations of massive physical objects reverently painted in black and white lit by starlight with deep dark shadowy craters. Like all of Broadbent’s endeavors the answers are not that cut and dried.

Broadbent has shown extensively throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Broadbent’s work won the Pulse Prize for best solo booth at Pulse Art Fair. His work was subsequently featured in “Mission to Space” at the Children’s Art Museum in Manhattan. His work is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Broadbent’s numerous solo exhibitions include the Visual Art’s Center of New Jersey, Croxhapox Gallery (Gent, Belgium) Voorkamer Gallery (Lier, Belgium) Inspace gallery (Beijing, China) and the Newark Arts Council. Broadbent’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Jersey Star-Ledger, NY Arts, The Brooklyn Rail and numerous other publications.