EXPO CHICAGO
Booth 209
Night Gallery is excited to present new work by Robert Nava at EXPO Chicago 2026. This presentation marks a meaningful homecoming for Nava whose creative imagination was first ignited by the cultural landscape of the Windy City.
Growing up in the Chicago area, Nava spent his formative years exploring the city's encyclopedic museum collections. Between the collision of ancient artifacts, medieval armor, and modern masterworks these institutions planted the seeds for the sprawling visual lexicon he continues to build today. Drawing from prehistoric cave paintings, Egyptian antiquities, video games and pop culture, Nava’s work articulates a personal mythology wherein ancient archetypes and contemporary references are woven into a distinct visual language.
His paintings embody a frenetically expressive rhythm that imbues the characters depicted with an essential urgency. Dragons, airplanes, gryphons and clowns are rendered in playful exchange, befriending the beastly in layers of oil stick, graphite, acrylic and spray paint. The sensibility of Nava’s work calls to mind the paintings of Cy Twombly and Jean-Michel Basquiat, with whom he shares a directness marked by spontaneity and instinct. With raw energetic gestures, Nava reveals a rigor that defies pretensions and connects viewers with his unbridled imagination.