Casa MB is pleased to present Thögal: Pausa nel Paesaggio, an exhibition of new works by Yoab Vera. This is the artist’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition opens on April 3 at Casa MB in Milan, with an opening reception from 7 to 9 pm.
Yoab Vera’s paintings are a contemplative exploration of memory, time, and spatial awareness, filtered through an introspective, material-driven practice. His work functions as meditative landscapes, evoking an elemental experience through structured simplicity. A central horizontal motif acts as both an anchor and a threshold into metaphysical spaces, reinforcing a sense of balance and presence. In this exhibition, the horizontal lines of his work mirror the expansive qualities of the sky, echoing the spirit of Thögal, a Tibetan Buddhist practice in which the practitioner pauses to observe the sky and nature, creating visions of light and color to recognize the nature of the mind.
The exhibition’s title, Pausa nel Paesaggio (Pause in the Landscape), reflects this meditative approach. Thögal invites a profound moment of reflection and stillness, rooted in pausing to observe the sky and nature. In this exhibition, Vera channels this practice, using it to engage with both nature and space, creating works that unfold from an intuitive, almost dreamlike process. His paintings—meditations on skies, seas, mountains, and landscapes—begin with a horizontal line that guides the eye across the canvas, evoking horizons that blur the boundary between the natural world and the artist’s internal space.
The exhibition’s setting at Casa MB amplifies this meditative journey. The colored walls, each a distinct pause, act as subtle thresholds, guiding the viewer from room to room, transforming the home into a space of fluid transitions. These transitions mirror Vera’s approach to painting, where materiality plays a key role. His use of oil, oil stick, and concrete creates a dynamic interplay between painterly tradition and architectural grounding. The immediacy of the oil stick contrasts with the weight and permanence of concrete, reflecting the tension in his work between nature and human intervention.
Vera’s surfaces bear the marks of his hands, their textured layers evoking geological processes and the slow passage of time. These material choices deepen the conceptual engagement with transformation and impermanence, inviting the viewer to pause and reflect on each piece and its relationship to the surrounding space. Vera’s engagement with mindfulness is not incidental; it is integral to his practice. The act of layering, scraping, and building texture parallels the cultivation of attentiveness in meditation, where each mark becomes an extension of awareness.
Much like Thögal, which encourages the practitioner to rest in the expansiveness of the sky, Vera’s meditative landscapes invite a pause between perception and feeling. The titles of his works, such as Stillwater Sitting—La Isla and Sky Mirroring—By the Glacier, reinforce the connection between perception, landscape, and inner reflection. These titles suggest that his paintings are not fixed representations but open-ended invitations for contemplation, functioning as both personal cartographies and spaces for meditative dialogue.
By embracing the tension between the built and the natural, the fleeting and the permanent, Vera crafts an aesthetic language that is both introspective and expansive. His work invites a dialogue between viewer and canvas, memory and presence, offering a vision of landscape not as a static reality but as a state of mind. As the boundaries of the home and the painting blur, Vera’s work encourages the viewer to enter a harmonious pause, creating a seamless transition between external space and internal reflection.
Yoab 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 Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). His work has been exhibited at 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; 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.