Reminiscence: El Dorado (To Italo Calvino), 2023
I paint to slow down time. The horizon is my structural guide, a threshold between what is seen and what is remembered. Each mark, each layer of oil-stick or concrete, is a record of mindful presence—of moving through space and returning to stillness.
Yoab Vera
Yoab Vera (b. 1985, Mexico City, MX) employs the motif of the horizon as a structural anchor for contemplation, approaching natural phenomena through intuitive mark-making. Integrating oil-stick, oil, and concrete, his work merges the materiality of architecture with the meditative qualities of painting, a practice he defines as “haptic contemplative painting.” Vera distills the experience of passing time into rhythmic chromatic fields, exploring the shifting conditions of light and the psychological landscapes of memory.
Vera holds an MFA in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also studied meditation practices at the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. He earned a BA in Studio Art and Art History, focusing on Latin American art, from Hunter College, New York, and studied Architecture at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. This interdisciplinary formation underpins his synthesis of visual, spatial, and cognitive research within his paintings and installations.
Vera’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Alexander Berggruen, New York (Reminiscence — Contigo Aprendí, 2024); Casa Gilardi, Mexico City (Scent of Time: Horizontes Temporales, 2024); El Castillete, Madrid (Amanecí Otra Vez, 2023); Make Room, Los Angeles (Circadian Memories: Amar Pacífico, 2023); Salón Acme, Mexico City (Pasajes Urbanos, curated by Ana Castella, 2022); and New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles (Haptic Contemplative Painting, 2021). He has participated in group exhibitions at Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome; CFHILL, Stockholm; GAVLAK Gallery, Los Angeles; Saenger Galería, Mexico City; Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna; and Make Room, Los Angeles, among others.
He has been awarded the New York Community Trust Award in Painting and Poetry (2021) and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Painting Prize (2019), and received fellowships from Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo and UCLA’s Moss Painting Scholarship. He has completed residencies at Duplex AIR (Lisbon), El Castillete (Madrid), Roman Road (Berlin), and the School of Fresco and Vernacular Architecture (Oaxaca). Vera’s works are held in private collections across Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Currently living and working between Mexico City and Istanbul, Vera continues to cultivate a contemplative approach to painting that foregrounds sensation, tactility, and perception as gateways to embodied awareness.