$18,000

Artwork Description

Vera’s work is buoyant, modular, and transitory. He often hybridizes materials from the everyday urban environment into his paintings and installations to allow memories of landscapes to emerge. He paints by combining oil-stick and concrete. He uses oil-stick for its tactile immediacy and concrete for being a recognizable and ubiquitous material reference in the architecture of urban spaces. The surface of his work is used as an impermanent field of possibilities for affective translation and recognition. He calls his practice -- haptic contemplative painting -- and uses meditation as a tool to slow down. Throughout his mindful movements both in his garden studio and afield as he transverses cities, he explores qualities of tactility, sensation and perceptionas they relate to bodily, mental and spatial states of awareness. Vera’s installations are an index of gestures that chart the relationship between objects, subjects and his own experiences in Mexico City, Istanbul and the various places in which he finds himself. Through his study and practice of self-awareness, cognitive science, and psychological research, his work embodies adynamic integration of painting and architecture with neuroaesthetics and spirituality.