"What’s the worst painting of all time? In 1969 it could have been Neil Jenney’s Man and Machine, a wonky image of a figure standing roadside next to his midcentury land yacht. Puke-green abounds, hasty brushstrokes ooze from the unconfident hand. Today, it might also be one of Robert Nava’s paintings. Take, for instance, The Psychology of Ares (2022), an over-the-top brawl – reminiscent of a childhood fantasy – in which a lopsided great white shark, a dragon and a centaur-like creature enact a battle royale as a diminutive (and crappy) castle burns. No gold star here. In an artworld age of uber-slick production values, and when everyone’s self-images are filtered and photoshopped, Nava offers an important, necessary return to the form of the ‘bad’. The painter’s slapdash scenes of angels and demons and dragons exist ‘somewhere between watching Unsolved Mysteries and Ancient Aliens’, mused Nava, in a recent interview with artist Huma Bhabha."