John Nava
Figure with Parasol, 2017
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OPENING RECEPTION 1ST THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, FROM 5 – 8PM
Sullivan Goss – An American Gallery celebrates the first solo exhibition in 8 years for nationally-renowned painter, John Nava. This exhibition will mark the debut of a body of work that began in 2011 and culminates in one of the artist’s masterworks: a monumental 27 foot long tapestry depicting contemporary beach life at Surfer’s Point in Ventura. Using Georges Seurat’s iconic A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte, as a point of inspiration, Nava’s The Big Platter continues the artist’s dialogue with historical moments of artistic revelation.
The exhibition will also feature a series of preparatory works created by the artist over the past 6 years, during his rare free time between large scale commission work on projects all over the United States. These are beautiful and delicately painted works, but their importance grows with their relationship to his highly ambitious and heroically scaled tapestry. These paintings represent some of the finest examples of the artist’s lifelong experimentation with historical techniques to create contemporary works of art.
John Nava studied art at UC Santa Barbara under Howard Warshaw and did his graduate work in Florence, Italy. His work is found in numerous private, corporate and public collections throughout the United States, Europe and Japan including the National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) of Hawaii, the Triton Museum in San Jose, California, the Museum of Ventura County, and the Figge Museum, Davenport, IA. A large monograph on the artist and his creation of the Communion of the Saints tapestries for Our Lady of the Angels cathedral in downtown Los Angeles will be published in December of this year.
Thinking big, burrowing into the details, and nding new paths between tradition and innovation are a few of the natural elements in the aesthetic process and mindset of the accomplished artist John Nava. All those facets come together, symbiotically, in the Ojai-based painter’s fascinating, not-to-miss exhibition at Sullivan Goss.
The craft of weaving has given us many of the most durable metaphors we have for high levels of communal integrity. It’s no accident that when people reach for the best appropriate way to praise a multicultural society, for example, they often speak of it as a “grand tapestry.”
A RETURN OF SORTS will take place during 1st Thursday when Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery celebrates the first solo exhibition in eight years for nationally-renowned painter John Nava.
