Rob Davis : Appollo

Rob Davis
Apollo
March 5 – April 18, 2026

 Broadway is pleased to announce Apollo, a solo exhibition of new oil paintings by New York artist Rob Davis. 

Comprising images of the American South of his youth—domestic interiors and quasi-landscapes culled from memory— the exhibition takes its title from the Greek god of light, a sly choice given the darkness that permeates the show. Connecting Goth, Gothic and American Gothic, these nocturnes plumb the exurban edges of our country’s bruised psyche, investing objects and locations with portent. 

Notably devoid of human inhabitants, Davis instead populates his images with a palpable absence and the residual evidence of recent departure. Blankets lie rumpled, pillows imprinted, a pickup truck is carelessly parked on the lawn, high school bleachers stand empty in the glare of a midnight streetlight. 

This strategy foregrounds the melancholy aspect inherent to memory, connecting the mundane accoutrements of a humble, recent past with the storied annals of painting. Evoking the longing of traditionalists like Andrew Wyeth as much as the anguish of Goya’s Black Paintings, Davis collapses disparate painting traditions and moods against a backdrop of our ongoing political turmoil. In his paintings of stacked plates and bowls, the austerity of Dutch still-life is inverted from an expression of bounty to the suggestion of need. A trio of gossamer nightgowns pinned to a backyard clothesline conjure Renaissance images of a crucified Christ and the thieves, complete with the wooden upright forming a subtle cross. 

The paintings’ enigmatic subjects, exacting execution and considered compositions amplify Davis’s signature friction between the homespun and a subtle suggestion of dread.