ROBERT NAVA

Vs

OPENING RECEPTION

Saturday, July 20, 2019, 7-10pm

July 20 – August 24, 2019
 

Night Gallery is pleased to announce Robert Nava Vs, an exhibition of new paintings which will be on view from July 20 to August 24, 2019. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 20, from 7-10pm. This is Nava’s first solo exhibition at Night Gallery, having appeared in multiple group presentations with the gallery in 2018. 

Nava is known for paintings of fantastical creatures in acrylic, oil stick, and graphite pencil in blunt, kinetic lines, overlaid with spray paint. These emerge from a daily drawing ritual, intended to awaken purely rhythmic instincts, which he equates to the most unconscious forms of markmaking. From these sketches arise the intuitive figures that appear in his paintings.  These creatures merge mythological characters that have persisted over millennia (gryphons, dragons, witches, among others) with impulsive contemporary flourishes (airplanes, buses, electric currents, flamethrowers). In their way, these monsters offer new archetypes of the present day, intuitively combining ancient folklore with the mundane machinery of 21st-century life. 

By its title, Robert Nava’s new solo exhibition suggests that the artist is in battle with the creatures of his own creation, encountering (and quickly vanquishing) one monstrous being after the next. This battle could refer to the process by which Nava translates his drawings to canvas, and the balance by which he must create careful compositions while preserving the drawings’ spirit of spontaneity. These deceptively simple works, with their unexpectedly complex colors and intuitively minimal forms, slowly reveal Nava’s virtuosity and rigorous labor. The paintings come to present the artist facing off against the limits of his own imagination, grappling with the energy of each of his creatures. The works become trophies of the artist conquering his craft, mementos of his invented adversaries.

Robert Nava (b. 1984, East Chicago, IN) received his MFA from Yale, New Haven, CT; and his BA from Indiana University Northwest, Gary, IN. He has had solo exhibitions at Sorry We’re Closed Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been included in group exhibitions at V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; and Safe Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. He was the recent subject of a profile in GQ, and in the past year was awarded a residency at the Macedonia Institute in New York state. Nava is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

Above: "Psychic Hotline Wolf," 2019

JASMINE LITTLE

Retrograde

OPENING RECEPTION

Saturday, July 20, 2019, 7-10pm

July 20 – August 24, 2019

Night Gallery is pleased to present Retrograde, an exhibition of new ceramics by Colorado-based artist Jasmine Little. This will be her first exhibition at the gallery.

The exhibition will be composed of large, cylindrical stoneware vessels with figurative iconography carved into their exterior surfaces. The numerous and varied influences in Little’s work span the entirety of the human experience. Flemish and Renaissance painting, medieval illuminated manuscripts, Safavid period carpets, Greek black-figure and red-figure pottery, and Japanese woodblock prints, are among the sources referenced in her work. The imagery oscillates between the extremes of elation and abjection while insisting in the perennial power of the object.

The decorative carving of these surfaces are dictated, in part, by the material itself as well as the firing technique. For this body of work, Little has used a unique formula of clay hand-mixed here in California that incorporates foreign substances creating a distinctive surface. She carves directly into this clay while it is still wet, then inlays additional materials including porcelain, common gravel, and, most notably, clinker bricks salvaged from a local Arts and Crafts-era house in Pasadena, CA. Clinker bricks, famously utilized by Greene & Greene Architects, are misshapen and discolored bricks that are created by hotspots within the kiln. These excavated bricks resonate with Little’s work on a technical and material level carrying a lineage of Californian craftspeople. 

Little’s work foregrounds a communal aspect of ceramics that breeds cross-pollination and slippage between artists working in physical proximity to each other. By utilizing materials specific to a single location while employing imagery that is universal to us all, Little creates objects that are overwhelmingly human.


Jasmine Little (b. 1984) lives and works in Alamosa, CO. She has recently exhibited at Galerie Dumonteil, Shanghai, China; Johannes Vogt, New York, NY; Lefebvre & Fils, Paris, France; Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA; and Five Car Garage, Santa Monica, CA. She has been featured in numerous publications including Whitewall, Artillery, New American Paintings, and LA Weekly. Her work is included in the Smithsonian collection of American Art.

Above: "Divine Comedy," 2019

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