“When I was 12 or 13, I could already draw and paint like Velasquez, but it took me a lifetime to learn how to draw like a kid again. [...] I know what I’m doing. It’s carefully done wrong.”
N eon Dragon (2020) is a powerful example of Robert Nava’s signature energetic, raw approach to image making, in which he employs a variety of materials from spray paint to acrylics and grease pencil. In Neon Dragon, the fiery dragon emerges from an expanse of blues, rendered in Nava’s distinctive graphic language which consciously rejects rigid painterly conventions.
“And even looking at a Renaissance painting, I would be looking for error, like mistakes were more alive to me. By drawing things ‘incorrectly,’ I found more things to do in that realm. So that's why I find it more interesting and why I draw and paint like this. It's been like that since probably 2007 or 2008, but now it's getting really refined, and I know what I want to do more.”
Neon Dragon epitomises Nava’s slapdash process, distinctive graphic lexicon and gleeful celebration of electric colours, consciously destabilising any rigid painterly conventions that the artist would have encountered as an MFA student at Yale University. In the vein of Jean Dubuffet’s art brut and echoing the short lived but influential development in American figurative painting of the 1970s, when the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York put on its notorious "Bad" Painting exhibition, bringing together a group of artists deliberately subverting recent styles of painting and rejecting conventional attitudes in iconography and technique, Nava’s visual language is purposefully crude and irreverent. Before starting to paint, Nava spends hours meticulously sketching out the forms he wants to paint on his large-scale canvases. After exhausting his sketchbook, the artist attacks the canvas with unbridled confidence.
Born in East Chicago, Robert Nava is an exciting young talent whose work can be found in major collections including the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, France; Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois;and Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida, amongst others.
「我約12或13歲時，已能像維拉斯奎茲那樣繪畫。但我窮盡一生，才學會如何再像孩子一樣繪畫。[...]我知道自己在做甚麼。這是我悉心構思的錯誤。」
納 瓦以澎湃奔放、原始率性的繪圖見稱，其作品用上噴漆、壓克力彩和油蠟筆等不同媒材綜合而成，作於2020年的《霓虹的龍》為此標誌畫風的臻絕典範。藝術家有意識地摒棄傳統繪畫的約束，反以其獨特的圖像語言，呈現畫中猛龍從一片蔚藍裡冒出，栩栩如生。
「甚至在觀賞一幅文藝復興畫作時，我也會故意從中尋找瑕疵，錯誤對我而言似乎更具生命力。透過『錯誤』的方式繪畫，我有更大發揮空間，我覺得這更為有趣，亦因此我選擇以這種方式繪畫。自大約2007年或2008年開始，我便以此風格作畫，現已達到爐火純青的境界。我更清楚未來要前進的方向。」
《霓虹的龍》將納瓦在耶魯大學修讀藝術碩士時所感受到的傳統繪畫約束一一打破，彰顯了他匆促率性的創作過程、別具一格的圖像語言，以及繽紛璀璨的用色。納瓦粗糙隨意的視覺語言承接了尚・杜布菲的「原生藝術」（Art Brut）概念，並呼應著1970年代在美國曇花一現，卻帶來深遠影響的具象主義風格。當時，紐約新當代藝術博物館曾將標奇立異的作品匯聚一堂，舉辦了驚人的《『壞』繪畫（Bad Painting）》展覽。這些藝術家故意顛覆近代繪畫風格，並抗拒使用傳統意象和技法，此態度與納瓦的創作理念有契合之處。他下筆前會先花上好幾個小時在素描簿上一絲不苟地設想，為其大型畫布上的構圖起草。完成後，他會揮灑自如地在畫布上動筆。
生於東芝加哥的羅伯特・納瓦是當今藝壇炙手可熱的冉冉新星，其作品獲收納於各大重要藝術機構，包括法國巴黎現代藝術博物館、美國伊利諾州芝加哥藝術博物館，以及佛羅里達州邁阿密當代藝術學院博物館等館藏。