Pablo Manga works in a mode of geometric abstraction infused with interests that are social and spiritual, emotional rather than rational, and concern bodies not platonic forms. His work combines an emphasis on opticality and color relativity with an interest in present-moment awareness developed through meditation practice. Manga aims for compositions that activate the eye and reward sustained viewing with unfolding internal dynamism and the emergence of shifting patterns and color relationships. In this way he invites the viewer to see themselves seeing—and feeling-thinking-being. Manga’s goal is for the work to open contemplative visual spaces that are a resource for inner life and being in the world. The works in Held Together were made a year into the pandemic and are layered with reflections on optimism, the challenges of isolation, and supports for joy-vitality-aliveness. The works build upon a series called Ojalá (a Spanish word meaning hopefully or God willing) that he began pre-pandemic and continued through 2020 as a way of persisting in his work. In that series, overlapping blocks of semi-transparent colored tape are arranged in dense grid patterns in a play of chromatic difference and repetition. The pieces present a kind of kaleidoscopic proliferation of the = sign, and are embedded with ideas of equality, multiplicity and inclusion. In them, each mark and combination of colors is unique and participates equally in the rhythm and voice of the collective assemblage.

The works in Held Together share many of these qualities or take them as a point of departure, even those compositions that take a variety of new forms. Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions about composition—especially spacing, but also shape, points of contact and relation—felt imbued with added significance when making the new work, even though that significance was not something that translated directly or prescriptively. In the end, the varied and exploratory forms in Held Together reflect a web of thoughts connected to sustaining optimism and joy under challenging circumstances and my abiding desire to do so.