Installation view of Yoab Vera: Spirit of Hope — Sueños Diurnos (January 21-February 25, 2026) at Alexander Berggruen, NY. Photo: Dario Lasagni
Yoab Vera employs the motif of the horizon as a guiding structural event for contemplation. The origin of his modular paintings is geometrically abstract, and the artist approaches representation of natural phenomena through intuitive mark-making. Using oil-stick, oil, and concrete, Vera integrates architecture, spirituality, and neuroaesthetics in what he terms “haptic contemplative painting.” Vera distills the complexity of passing time into the simple truth of the rise and fall of the sun, mindfully exploring reality through the present moment, the psychological components of memory, and the changing conditions of light.
Vera (b. Mexico City, 1985) received an MFA from 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 graduated with a BA in Studio Art and Art History with a concentration in Latin American Art from Hunter College, New York, NY, and studied Architecture in Mexico City at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). His work has been exhibited at Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; Casa Gilardi, Mexico City, MX; El Castillete, Madrid, ES; Andrea Festa, Rome, IT; Make Room, Los Angeles, CA; Saenger Galería, Mexico City, MX; CFHILL, Stockholm; and GAVLAK Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Vera has held residencies at Duplex AIR, Lisbon, PT; El Castillete, Madrid, ES; Roman Road, Berlin, DE; and Fresco and Vernacular Architecture Painting School, Oaxaca City, MX. He was awarded the New York Community Trust Award in Painting and Poetry and has also received awards from the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City. The artist lives and works between Mexico City and Istanbul.
Yoab Vera in the studio, Mexico City, MX, 2025.
YOAB VERA: SPIRIT OF HOPE — SUEÑOS DIURNOS
January 21-February 25, 2026
YOAB VERA: REMINISCENCE — CONTIGO APRENDÍ
July 10-August 22, 2024
YOAB VERA: HORIZONTES DE SENTIDO
February 3-15, 2026
Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City
Curated by Marisol Argüelles, with support from Saenger Galería
In what he refers to as “haptic contemplative painting,” Mexican artist Yoab Vera’s paintings combine the spirit of architecture, spirituality, and mindfulness. The sea horizon is a motif that the Mexico City- and Istanbul-based artist uses to explore the flow of time, memory, and light. Trained as an architect, his pastel-colored canvases stand out for their use of exposed concrete combined with traditional media like oil paint and oil stick, which he applies by hand in repetitive, horizontal motions that reflect his meditative process. Paintings by the artist are also on view at Mexico City’s Museo Dolores Olmedo, paired with Diego Rivera’s sunset canvases, through Feb. 15, and in a solo show at New York’s Alexander Berggruen, through Feb. 25.
— Paul Laster
Yoab Vera is a Mexican artist who creates what he calls “haptic contemplative painting,” a practice that combines architecture, spirituality, and mindfulness. Celebrated for creating paintings that focus on the sea horizon as a meditation motif, he uses it to explore the flow of time, memory, and light. Inspired by the Emotional Architecture of Mexican modernists like Luis Barragán, his pastel-colored canvases stand out for their use of exposed concrete paired with traditional media like oil and oil stick, which he applies by hand in repetitive, horizontal motions that reflect his meditative practice.
Presenting a selection of 13 new paintings in “Spirit of Hope—Sueños Diurnos,” the Mexico City and Istanbul-based artist’s second solo show with the gallery, his use of vibrant, saturated colors (pinks, yellows, and deep blues) directly pays homage to the pigmented walls found in Barragán’s work. His paintings often blend natural landscapes with the urban environments of cities he’s lived in, including Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, and Istanbul—these current canvases were created in the same Coyoacán neighborhood where Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo once worked. Trained as an architect, Vera uses light and color to evoke spiritual serenity in physical structures, creating metaphysical spaces that invite viewers to pause and reflect.
— Paul Laster
Writing about our recent exhibition Yoab Vera: Reminiscence — Contigo Aprendí (July 10-August 22, 2024), American art critic and poet Donald Kuspit wrote:
There’s something touching about Yoab Vera’s abstract seascapes, all homages to a type of American vanguardism that, once upon a time, flourished in New York. Some of the seascapes are dedicated to painters he has learned from […] while others celebrate artists who worked in different fields […]
The works’ titles often allude to a canonical artist’s most significant pieces of themes. Take Reminiscence: Summerspace (to Merce Cunningham, Morton Feldman, & Robert Rauschenberg) (all works 2024), named after a collaborative 1958 performance executed by the titular trio (Cunningham choreographed the dances, while Feldman made the music and Rauschenberg created the sets). The work depicts a spectacular orange sun—its pink and persimmon rays stretch out to three of the rectangular painting’s four edges—rising over magenta waters. The picture has an almost sacred air to it, as if the historical event being referenced was a product of heaven itself.
Using the horizon line over a sea as a compositional starting point, Yoab Vera creates scenes that are at once representative but use the language of abstraction. Described by the artist as “haptic contemplative painting,” Vera taps elements of architecture, spirituality, and neuroaesthetics (a scientific, neurological approach to the consideration of aesthetics) to explore facets of reality, both real and perceived.
Using oil sticks, oil paints, and concrete, each work has an added sense of tactility and immediacy, allowing Vera to further allude to the multifaceted themes and formal investigations he pursues throughout the body of work on view.
Tying the show further to his ongoing practice, the name of the show Reminiscence – Contigo Aprendi (translated: I learned with you) is a dedication to New York, where the artist first began his painting practice, and an homage to artists such as Piet Mondrian and Blinky Palermo who similarly dedicated work to the Big Apple.
On the occasion of his exhibition Spirit of Hope — Sueños Diurnos, the artist Yoab Vera discusses the concepts he explores in his new body of work. He discusses the exhibition layout and some of the underlying concerns–la pausa, horizon, affect, and hope–that guide his practice. He writes: “Concrete enters the paintings as structure, memory, and touch. Mixed with oil and oilstick, it thickens the surface and gives the painting resistance. I am interested in how this material can exist in painting without being depicted as architecture. It appears instead as weight, duration, and trace. Over time, the concrete tends to disappear beneath layers of color while continuing to shape the relief.”
On the occasion of our exhibition Yoab Vera: Reminiscence — Contigo Aprendí (July 10-August 22, 2024), we spoke with the Mexico City and Istanbul-based artist about his work.
