Pablo Manga

I use trans­par­ent and semi-transparent adhe­sive tape to make works that evoke both paint­ing and draw­ing. I delight in the unex­pected sen­su­al­ity of the tape and aim to unleash its aes­thetic res­o­nance while also let­ting the mate­r­ial be itself. My work is a med­i­ta­tion on both on the for­mal prop­er­ties of the every­day mate­r­ial with which it is made and the broader every­day world from which it is drawn.

In each work of my cur­rent Linescape series, I use a dif­fer­ent kind of trans­par­ent adhe­sive tape, lay­ered hor­i­zon­tally, to cre­ate a qui­etly undu­lat­ing land­scape of line, form and tone. These land­scapes allude to vast expanses of sand, sea, sky and snow, as well as sug­gest inner med­i­ta­tive space. The series also engages ideas from the philo­soph­i­cal work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guat­tari. For me, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of lines in each of piece forms what they call a plateau, a part of a plane of imma­nence on which inten­si­ties and waves cir­cu­late and flow.

The works, which appear dif­fer­ently when viewed from dif­fer­ent angles and accord­ing to changes in the ambi­ent light, invite height­ened per­cep­tion and aware­ness of the present moment. More­over, though the works have been cov­ered in an archival var­nish to increase the longevity of the hum­ble mate­r­ial with which they are made, there is a dynamic ten­sion between the pris­tine effect and some inevitable patina of aging that the works will take on over time and which is inte­gral to them.