The Best Booths at Expo Chicago: Robert Nava at Night Gallery

“It costs a lot to look this cheap,” Dolly Parton once said. Robert Nava’s paintings may look hectic and hasty, and like the work of a child, but we know it takes hard work and real freedom to let go of our received ideas of competency and correctness. The artist, an East Chicago native, counts the Chicago Imagists as an early inspiration, and, having moved to New York after attending Yale, he also holds Jean-Michel Basquiat as a major influence, Night Gallery founder Davida Nemeroff said. 

Commanding the booth is his Volt Dog, Batteries Dragon (2025), in which the titular beasts cavort against a pink ground, accompanied by summary depictions of a tree, a submarine, and bolts of lightning. The canvas is painted in oil and acrylic, with some sections having the feel of an airbrushed piece of graffiti hastily thrown up. He worked on it over two years, according to Nemeroff.