Artist Robert Nava Explores Energy and Flow Through Punk-Inflected Expressionism

Robert Nava opens the door to his cavernous Brooklyn studio in a vintage “Shout at the Devil” Mötley Crüe T-shirt and a beat-up camouflage jacket. He’s had the loft for three years and outfitted it with red velvet faux-Baroque furniture, bought on a whim at a local chandelier store—an exquisitely ironic touch. Strewn around the room are a series of paintings of different sizes, most of which are destined for his exhibition After Hours, on view from March 14 through April 26, at Pace Gallery’s New York flagship. He pauses by an extra-large canvas he’s still considering for the show: an electric-pink and red fang-toothed dragon hovering beneath a swath of starry night sky, rendered in the artist’s inimitable ancient art meets cartoonish, Dungeon-punk expressionism. Another new work, Jumanji Playing, features his beloved black Bombay cat with a bright pink snarl and a set of fire wings. “I think of these particular paintings as a mental bracket between cave art and old 16-bit style video games,” says Nava. He quickly clarifies: “I’m not a gamer. I kind of stopped in the ’90s. I feel it would’ve gotten too addictive.”

After Hours is a follow up to Nava’s previous Pace show, in London, which was his first solo exhibition in the U.K. Thunderbolt Disco, as it was titled, debuted in spring 2022, alongside Nava’s first monograph by Pace Publishing, with texts by artist-curator Mark Beasley and sculptor Huma Bhabha. “That show came out of the idea of dance and movement, and this one continues those themes of energy and flow. There is an after-hours spot where some of my painting and music-making friends go to in Bushwick from 4 AM to about noon,” says Nava. “The ground level has blue lighting and a more ambient, lighter, atmospheric type of electronic music. Upstairs is all red lighting with fast, hard techno and acid house. The two levels also reminded me that I’m having a show in New York that’s on level two and level seven of the gallery.” Earlier this year, Nava also curated The Monster, a group show for Pace that coincided with Frieze Los Angeles, and is on view through March 22. Inspired by the classic horror novel Frankenstein, Nava’s checklist included pieces by the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith.

Nava was raised in Gary, Indiana. His father was a steelworker and his mother did secretarial work in Chicago for Prudential Insurance. Nava describes “a lot of alone time” in his childhood. He was often watched by one of his two older sisters, or at a daycare center or church. “Seeing my mother getting up at 5 AM to travel to her job was an example of a very hard work ethic,” he recalls. “I still wake up with the sun.” Nava fondly credits his middle school art teacher, Mrs. Foster, who loved Impressionist painters, and his field trips to the Art Institute of Chicago as foundational. He eventually graduated with a BFA from Indiana University; an MFA in painting from Yale followed in 2011. “In undergrad I had text with my images,” he says. “A sloppily painted car hitting another car said, ‘Not Funny’ on it—essentially memes before memes had come out.”

At Yale, he had teachers like heavyweight artists Peter Halley and Carroll Dunham. But Nava’s success certainly didn’t happen overnight. “I went from Yale to driving a moving truck, handling boxes and furniture, and bending steel in New York,” he says with a slight laugh, remembering the early days. “I mean, I’m responsible for [Brooklyn’s] McCarren Park. I bent the steel on half of the arches. It was Yale to about nothing for a good stretch of time.”

Fast-forward to the rise of social media, when Nava took a friend’s suggestion to post work on Instagram. “I was making paintings of the backs of trucks, and they slowly turned into faces,” he says. “I had a friend tell me, of course you are going to paint the trucks as gods. Oh look, ‘the Con Edison truck looks like a ghost.’”

Slowly but surely, Nava started selling—a drawing for $200 here, $500 for two paintings there. In 2017, the San Juan, Puerto Rico dealer Roberto Paradise brought Nava’s work to Expo Chicago; then Nava mounted his first important solo show, in Brussels in 2018 with the gallery Sorry, We’re Closed; Los Angeles representation with Night Gallery came in 2019 (that year, he relinquished his keys at the moving company to paint full time); he officially joined Pace in 2020, and had a breakout show titled Angels, with Vito Schnabel, the following year. From the start, critics praised Nava as disruptive, chaotic, raw, and maximalist. Haters used the tiresome trope that their child could have painted that.

How did all the attention affect his creativity? “Negative or positive reviews aren’t what brought me to the dance in the first place,” he replies. “Whether it feels bad or great, I try not to let either one of those come into the studio when I’m working.” Perhaps due to the Basquiat vibes and the spray paint in his oeuvre, Nava makes a point of reminding people that graffiti and street art are not part of his origin story. “I went right into acrylic and stayed with it for many years,” says Nava of his first medium of choice. “Oil just took too much time and I’m impatient. I like the speed element.” Lately, however, he’s been experimenting with oil stick; he likes the way light passes through it and how it feels like drawing with a big crayon.

As our visit winds down, Nava reflects on his daily sketches, which he considers the building blocks for his paintings. He flips through one of the black, pocket-size Moleskine notebooks that he always carries with him. The pages are filled with prehistoric looking drawings and loose, abstract representations of some of the mythical creatures from Nava’s career. “I have a well of images that I’ve become obsessed with and that keep evolving,” he says. “When you begin painting, the canvas just starts to take them. If you’re really on fire, it’s not even you making the paintings.”