CV
Solo & Two-Person Exhibitions
2021 (solo) Held Together | Farm Projects, Wellfleet, MA
2020 (solo) A Thing or Two | Farm Projects, Wellfleet, MA
2019 Shiny Happy | Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 (solo) Chromatopia | Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017 Visual Planes | Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2013 (solo) Bold As Love | CIC, Cambridge, MA
2012 (solo) Bold As Love | Farm Project Space + Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
2010 (solo) Linescapes | Farm Project Space + Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
Everyday is Not the Same | Branch Gallery, Oakland, CA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 Art Market SF | Art fair exhibition with Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2022 Art Miami | Art fair exhibition with Hang Art Gallery, Miami, FL
2021 Who Happened? | Your Mood Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Art Miami | Art fair exhibition with Hang Art Gallery, Miami, FL
2020 de Young Open | de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA
MFA Never | Root Division, San Francisco, CA
Left Coast | Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, CA
2019 SCOPE Miami Beach | Art fair exhibition with Hang Art Gallery, Miami, FL
45 Revolutions Per Minute | Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2017 Same, Same, But Different 6.0 | Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016 Summer National Juried Exhibition | Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, CA
New Quarters | Hayes Valley Art Works, San Francisco, CA
2015 Aqua Art Miami | Art fair exhibition with Hang Art Gallery, Miami, FL
Ordering| Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2014 Same, Same, But Different 3.0 | Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Farmers All In | Farm Project Space + Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
2013 Winter Reading: Lines of Poetry | Diane Birdsall Gallery, Old Lyme, CT
Same, Same, But Different 2.0 | Hang Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2012 Farmers Here | Farm Project Space + Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
2011 Gifting Abstraction | Soho20 Gallery, New York, NY
Farmers | Farm Project Space + Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
2010 Boom | Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA
2008 New Visions 2008 | Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, CA
2007 New Directions '07 | Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY
Faber Birren Color Award Show | Stamford Art Association, Stamford, CT
2005 Nichos y Recuerdos – El Círculo de la Luz | Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA
2002 Substance of Choice: Emerging Latino/a Artists | Galería de la Raza, San Francisco, CA
Awards & Residencies
2020 Parent Artist Residency Award | Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA
Certificate of Honor, City and County of San Francisco
Other Projects
2020 Presidio Field Hospital Mural Project | San Francisco, CA
2019-2020 Deleuze & Guattari Reading Group | Pro Arts Gallery & Commons, Oakland, CA
Collections
Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), Cambridge, MA
Google (Mountainview, CA)
Press
Corbin, Mary, “Sticking to it: The packing tape art of Pablo Manga,” 48hills.org, April 2, 2024
Associated Press, "Artists bring life to field hospitals set up to help with surging coronavirus pandemic," Honolulu Star Advertiser, December 9, 2020
Piazza, Kurt, “Original Artwork Favorites at Basel Miami 2019,” Lonelyocean.art, December 8, 2019
Beaulieu, Kristen, “Colorful Art at Art Basel Miami 2019,” Lonelyocean.art, December 3, 2019
Barry, Amy J., “Artists on the Same Page,” The Day, February 2, 2013
Katz, Marni Elyse, “Art Monday: Pablo Manga,” Stylecarrot.com, July 30, 2012
Katz, Marni Elyse, “Art Monday: Pablo Manga at Farm Project Space + Gallery,” Stylecarrot.com, Aug. 23, 2010
Cheng, DeWitt, “Picks: Every Day is Not the Same,” East Bay Express, August 4-10, 2010: 21
Storck, Jeanne, “Extra-ordinary Perspective,” The Monthly, Vol. 40, No. 10, July 2010: 12
Gelbach, Amy, “I am a Tape Junkie: Substance of Choice at Galería de la Raza,” SF Station.com, Aug. 2, 2002
Education
2003 Juris Doctor | U.C. Berkeley School of Law
1996 Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy | U.C. Berkeley
BIO
Pablo Manga is an Oakland, California-based, Colombian-American artist known for his abstract compositions using semi-transparent adhesive tape as a painting medium.
Manga’s work has been exhibited locally at the de Young Museum, Southern Exposure, Root Division, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Galería de la Raza, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, and Pro Arts. Nationally, his work has been shown at the SCOPE and Aqua art fairs (Miami, FL), Farm Projects (Wellfleet, MA), Soho20 Gallery (New York, NY) and Diane Birdsall Gallery (Old Lyme, CT). His work is in the collections of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) (Cambridge, MA) and Google (Mountainview, CA).
Interwoven with his art practice, Manga earned a B.A. in philosophy from U.C. Berkeley, taught Spanish and bilingual math in the New York City public schools, and was a practicing arts lawyer in San Francisco. He led a Deleuze & Guattari philosophy reading group at Pro Arts Gallery & Commons (Oakland, CA), and was awarded a Parent Artist Residency Award at Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, CA). At the Kala residency, Manga brought the vocabulary he developed in his tape work into printmaking, and further developed it in large-scale murals painted for the Presidio Field Hospital mural project.
In January 2021, Manga completed a site-specific mural at Hang Art’s Fort Mason location. Held Together was his fourth solo show at Farm Projects.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I make abstract compositions — layered monochromes, undulating horizons, destabilized grids and floating stacks— using semi-transparent, adhesive tape as a painting medium.
I started working with tape during a year-long, self-made residency in Mexico City, where I encountered colorful, semi-transparent tape that I’d never seen before. At the time, I was starting to paint after working primarily with collage and found objects, and tape bridged those interests as something both painterly and plucked from daily life.
This led to a sustained exploration of the medium and the development of my Latin American zen-maximalist aesthetic which uses languages of abstraction (e.g. reductive, geometric, hard-edge) and the interaction of color to explore phenomena of perception, joy and meditative experience. Whether my work is overtly tranquil or buzzing with energy, my goal is to create contemplative visual spaces that are a resource for inner life and being in the world.
My newest work in tape deconstructs the strata of my typically dense layering into dyadic blocks. This both simplifies and complicates the color relationships at work, and foregrounds the materiality of the tape on an aerated and activated field. Conceptually, I see a kind of joyous pluralism in the chromatic play of difference and repetition that emerges in these block formations. Building on the experiences of the Kala printmaking residency and Presidio field hospital murals, I have continued engaging questions of scale and materials, bringing the shapes, colors and compositions of my work in tape into a new body of acrylic paintings.
