Tyler Park Presents is pleased to announce Deadbolt, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Henri Paul Broyard. The exhibition will be on view from June 8 - July 13, 2024.

A deadbolt symbolizes more than just a door and a locking mechanism—it represents control, the power to decide what enters and what stays out. Within the confines of a living space, it signifies the assurance of keeping the interior secure from external intrusion. It embodies a security measure, shielding against the unfamiliar and undesirable. Beyond its physical manifestation, a mental deadbolt mirrors this safeguarding instinct, whether intentionally or instinctively, locking away memories or experiences for a sense of psychological security.

The paintings in Deadbolt often start from an archive of personal images, found photographs, books, and family albums. Broyard approaches these images as a voyeur, observing the spaces they depict, until gradually immersing himself in them through the act of painting. In this process, figures are stripped away, objects are subdued, and colors are shifted dramatically to suit his own preferences. While windows are consistently either omitted or abstracted, nature finds its way in through various objects—a plywood table, a backdrop reminiscent of tree bark—rendering a distinctive interplay between the constructed and the organic. These inclinations are deeply influenced by Broyard’s life encounters, weaving nuanced layers of coded experiences onto the canvas.

Moving between abstraction and representation, Broyard’s work has an interest in domestic environments that evoke the subconscious of intimate spaces, objects, and memories. 4424 is a painting of the artist’s grandmother's rocking chair that shows up in photos of his father as a child. The painting acts as a portrait but because of the lack of a figure, it stays open enough for the viewer to enter and in turn pour their own experience into the painting. 6K9 is a work based on a photograph the artist’s mother took in their childhood kitchen during a night when lobsters were cooked that a friend of hers had gifted. The color of the avocado formica countertop seems to creep throughout the painting covering the bulk of the canvas and vivid memories of that kitchen are all punctuated by the green countertop. Like a dream, as you get closer to the more tangible parts of the painting it begins to fall apart like the inside of a toaster oven turns into a chaotic field of shifting grays. Showing for the first time, the exhibition includes PH1, a wooden sculpture reminiscent of the adorned homes from his upbringing in South Central, Los Angeles that articulates the space, objects, and memories from which his practice stems from.

Henri Paul Broyard (b. Los Angeles, California) received a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from the California College of the Arts in 2013. He attended the Klasse Peter Doig at the Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, in 2014. Broyard has had solo exhibitions at Grant Wahlquist Gallery in Portland, Maine; Post Gallery, Zurich; and Foreland in Catskill, New York. Broyard’s work has been included in group exhibitions at venues including: Deli Gallery, New York; Alexander Gray Gallery, New York and Germantown; Essex Flowers, New York; Gern en Regalia, New York; Cindy Rucker Gallery, New York; and Tom Dick or Harry, Dusseldorf, amongst others. His work has been the subject of reviews and publications in ArtNews, the Portland Press Herald, and The Rib.