ART CITIES: N.York-Robert Nava

Robert Nava’s practice creates its own mythology. His paintings fuse abstract mark-making with child-like figuration that depicts supernatural beings such as witches, ghouls, monsters, and dragons. The works combine the light and the dark, exploring themes of violence, nonsense, folklore, and fantasy. Both ancient and modern influences inform Nava’s work, from Sumerian carvings and cave paintings, to Abstract Expressionism, Bad Painting, and contemporary artists.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Robert Nava’s solo exhibition “After Hours” brings together new paintings of various scales, including three monumental 244 x 396 cm canvases, and a selection of works on paper. Populated by a cast of hybrid bodies, at once mythic and everyday, Nava’s paintings and drawings navigate the space between the raw and the refined. Often imbued with a sense of philosophical and psychological charge, his figures suggest a dark, contemplative, and existential mood despite their vibrancy, liveliness, and humor. Nava takes inspiration for his distinctive lexicon of characters and forms from a diverse range of sources, from ancient art, mythology, and religion to horror films, science fiction, video games, and cartoons. Bold and lively, his works do not adhere to any kind of linear narrative—they are fantastical scenes of beauty and chaos that invite viewers to reconnect with the unbridled imagination of their childhoods. “I don’t consciously revisit my fears, but after I paint, I feel a therapeutic sense of getting things out of me subconsciously,” Nava has said of his intuitive process. The artist’s spotlights never-before-seen paintings and drawings he created in the past year. Nava has intensified the action underway in many of these compositions, experimenting with scale, repeating images, and animated abstract elements. Two-headed tigers, birds, sharks, and other creatures proliferate across these maximalist works, which will be exhibited alongside several subdued, minimal scenes he produced to balance the show. The artist situates several of his new figurations against dark skies replete with gold, glowing stars to evoke the magic of dreams, nightmares, and the unconscious mind. A suite of elaborate new works on paper complements the paintings on view in the exhibition. Highlighting the relationship between Nava’s drawing and painting practices, these works also shed light on his approach to sketching, an integral part of his work as an artist. In the pages of his notebooks, he works through ideas that come to life in his phantasmagoric paintings of real and imagined creatures. Exuding a sense of play, these small-scale drawings offer a more intimate, focused experience of the artist’s madcap world.

Photo: Robert Nava, Dream Tiger, 2024, acrylic and grease pencil on linen, 94″ × 140-1/4″ (238.8 cm × 356.2 cm), © Robert Nava, Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery

Info: Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 14/3-26/4/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 1o:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/