Robert Nava

After Hours

On View
Mar 14 – Apr 26, 2025
New York

Pace is pleased to present After Hours, an exhibition of new work by Robert Nava, at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. On view from March 14 to April 26, the show will span the gallery’s second and seventh floors, bringing together new paintings of various scales, including three monumental 8 x 13 foot 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 upcoming exhibition with Pace in New York will spotlight 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 will complement the paintings on view in After Hours. 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.

After Hours coincides with The Monster, a group exhibition curated by Nava, which continues at Pace’s Los Angeles gallery through March 22.

That's one of the exciting points in painting is being on the ledge of something very familiar or right around the corner from something very unknown.

Robert Nava

Films

Discovering the Unexpected with Robert Nava

Inside his Brooklyn studio, Robert Nava discusses how his visual language of fantastical creatures and characters has evolved over time through "combinations and subtractions of different mythological forms," as he puts it. The artist also sheds light on his intuitive painting process, reveling in moments of "being on the ledge of something very familiar or right around the corner from something very unknown."

Seal, and it has a stick and... reflecting pool by Robert Nava

Right Before You Make a Splash by Robert Nava

And Suddenly They Evolved by Robert Nava

Robert-Nava-Matteo Mobilio-Pace Gallery.jpg

About the Artist

Robert Nava earned a BFA in Fine Art from Indiana University in 2008 as well as an MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2011. His practice centers on large-scale paintings and works on paper that portray whimsical creatures, rendered through gestural markings. Finding inspiration in the art of the distant past, from Medieval Christian imagery to Mayan and Sumerian art, as well as popular contemporary sources such as animation, Nava creates compositions that are carefully considered yet marked by a sense of naivete and spontaneity.

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EXHIBITION DETAILS

Robert Nava
After Hours
Mar 14 – Apr 26, 2025

GALLERY

540 West 25th Street
New York

PRESS

Press Release

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Robert Nava

After Hours

Films

Discovering the Unexpected with Robert Nava

Checklist

About the Artist

EXHIBITION DETAILS

GALLERY

PRESS

CONNECT

Journal

Discovering the Unexpected with Robert Nava

Robert Nava on Bringing Monstrosity to Life

Robert Nava in Conversation with Guillermo Solana

Robert Nava at the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid