Interviews, Online Exclusive

Robert Nava

Creatures in Flux

Words PLUS MAGAZINE

Photography JAE KIM

For his first exhibition in Tokyo, Robert Nava presents a body of work filled with creatures that feel unstable, physical, and alive. Across paintings and works on paper, figures appear part animal, part human, part invented, drawn in grease pencil and oil stick, then partially buried under acrylic and pulled back out again. Forms stretch and collapse against flat fields of color, with electric yellows, thick blacks, and raw whites cutting through blue skies or darkened ground. The surfaces show their own history: outlines doubled, gestures interrupted, paint smeared, scraped, and redrawn until the image holds through tension. The works carry humor and menace at once, recalling monsters and hybrid beings that resonate with Japan’s long visual tradition, while staying rooted in Nava’s direct, hand-driven process. On the occasion of his Tokyo debut, we sat down with Nava in his Brooklyn studio to talk about hybrids and myth and what it means to leave a work open to the viewer.

PLUS MAGAZINE: Japan has a long visual history of creatures, spirits, and hybrid forms. How did you think about your work entering that visual landscape as you prepared for the exhibition?

ROBERT NAVA: I’m very curious to see how the work will be experienced there. Japan has a long visual history with the kinds of imagery I’m drawn to, and it reaches back much further than American culture. My work isn’t refined in a polished sense, and I wonder how that reads there. It might look messy, but I hope it’s a meaningful mess. Imperfection can be human, and sometimes the “off” parts are what stay with you. I’m also influenced by many cultures, including ancient works from Egypt and Sumer. Those objects carry presence, even when you don’t understand the exact language. I hope my work carries some presence too.

P: Your description of energy and movement seems closely connected to the idea of presence in these paintings. Tell us how that title came into focus.

RN: With this show, I was thinking about energy and movement. A lot of my paintings include elements like fire, lightning, water, or air. I wanted the show to feel like an entrance that hits with motion and charge. Supercharger is about spirit and spark. Not a direct narrative, but an energetic feeling in each painting, like a jolt.

P: When someone first walks into the exhibition, is there a particular work you see as an entry point into this world?

RN: I would consider Song of Armor (2025) as the central point. It has chaos around it, but also a calm center. It’s about finding an inner armor, a steady place inside yourself, even when everything outside feels loud.

P: That sense of a calm center feels important in your work. At the same time, many of your paintings give the impression that we’ve stepped into something already in motion. They don’t seem to begin or end within the frame, but exist inside a larger atmosphere. How do you think about the narrative in your work?

RN: I like the feeling of being inside a narrative without a clear beginning or end. I want the painting to feel like you’ve stepped into the middle of something already in motion, held together by mood and tension rather than a fixed storyline.

I’m drawn to small gestures and peripheral details, but I also love the scale and drama of epic painting history. I like when a larger story feels present, yet your eye can still settle on a quieter detail that carries just as much weight.

I don’t usually plan a continuous narrative across multiple canvases. But when paintings sit next to each other in the studio, they start to form relationships on their own. One figure begins to react to another, and a larger world starts to suggest itself without me forcing it.

“I wanted the show to feel like an entrance that hits with motion and charge. Supercharger is about spirit and spark. Not a direct narrative, but an energetic feeling in each painting, like a jolt.”

P: As we talk about this larger world your paintings seem to create, it also becomes clear how specific each figure feels. They never seem accidental. Do you usually know the subject before you begin?

RN: Sometimes, yes. Some subjects come from drawings I’ve already made. Other times, the idea is more direct: I’ll think, “I want to see a room full of vampire paintings,” and if I don’t see that existing, I want to make it.
Sometimes a subject is also a formal key. With vampires, I get to use pale flesh tones, silvers, and certain shapes. With witches, I get triangles, the hat, the chin, the nose. A subject unlocks form and structure.

P: Those subjects rarely stay fixed to a single form. Animals, humans, and invented beings seem to merge quite naturally in your work.

RN: Mythology is full of hybrid beings, and religious imagery has many combinations, too. I like pushing that lineage forward and extending it into my own world. Hybrids open up imagination. It’s simple in a way. You make something you haven’t seen before without needing it to be literal. It can also carry a lot emotionally. These creatures can hold fear, humor, happiness, and discomfort all at once. I’m interested in the space between seriousness and play, where laughter and tears feel very close to each other.

P: The creatures can appear playful at first, but there’s also a weight to them, where humor and unease sit side by side. What kind of inner life do you imagine they have?

RN: At times, they feel older than they look. I often make first and think later. A figure might look happy at first, and later it starts to feel menacing, or the opposite. I want the work to hold spirit. I don’t know how to “teach” that, but I believe you can feel it. I think the line tells the truth, especially in drawing. A hand-drawn line records confidence, hesitation, speed, and pressure. Painting hides some of that, but you can still create gesture and motion. You can make something feel active, or still, or charged.

P: Speaking about gesture and charge, how does that translate into your process, from the blank canvas to the moment it’s finished?

RN: I kind of think about it in three ways, especially with canvas. Paper is quicker and feels more disposable, so the approach can be different. Sometimes I start with a clear idea, and I follow it all the way through. Other times, I start with an idea, but somewhere in the middle, the painting starts to tell me it wants to go another way. And then there are times when I start with no idea and the image slowly forms on its own. A painting can feel finished even when it looks unfinished. Not making another move is also a decision. You usually know it’s done when you can’t add anything without harming it.

P: It sounds like a lot of that decision comes from spending time with the work, just being with it.

RN: Completely. The paintings feel like they talk back. There’s a conversation between you and the work, and also between the paintings beside each other. There’s also downtime where you sit with the work and let time show you what it needs. Sometimes the best marks happen when you stop trying to control it.

P: And while you’re in that back-and-forth with the paintings, you’re not just standing in front of one canvas. Your studio feels very active. Do you usually have several works going at the same time?

RN: Usually, I do. The studio is set up so I can move between canvases while one dries. It’s like cooking, you’re working with timing. I pace a lot. There’s a lot of looking, walking away, coming back, and looking again.

P: Once the paintings leave the studio and enter the exhibition space, what do you hope stays with viewers?

RN: I hope it leaves a sense of energy and looseness. The viewer completes the work. I bring my intentions, and they bring their own life to it. I’ve seen people read a painting in ways I never expected, and that’s the point. A painting can be like a portal. Everyone enters with their own history and leaves with something different. If the show makes someone want to make something, draw something, or go back to work, that feels meaningful to me.

P: Listening to you talk about looking, painting, and spending time with images, it feels like this way of working has been with you for a long time. When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?

RN: As a kid, I noticed a couple of cousins who could draw cartoons really well, and seeing that made me want to try. My grandmother was a big influence too. She was always drawing, often making abstract, unconscious marks, just moving a pen across the page without overthinking it.

I started by copying cartoons from cereal boxes. In middle school, my friends and I became “the kids who could draw.” By high school, we felt like we could outdraw the teachers. In undergrad, though, I realized how much more there was to learn, and how much of it came down to looking.

I think drawing, even photorealism, can be learned. It takes time and a lot of looking. And in a way, that’s still what I’m doing now. I’m still looking, still trying to understand what a line can say, what a shape can hold, and what happens when you let the image form before you try to explain it.

Robert Nava’s “Supercharger” is on view at Pace, 2F; Azabudai Hills Garden Plaza-A, 5-8-1 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo, from February 19 to April 1, 2026.