For Soler Santos’ Static Nature, the starting point, as with most things these days, is the time he spent during the pandemic. Shut indoors, Soler started making small collages and drawings — work that bears the enduring influence of his foremost mentor, Roberto Chabet — to combat restlessness, and he found that he enjoyed the process.custom baseball jersey mens nike air max 97 nike air max cb 94 release dates 2023 adidas promo code nike air max shoes men nfl pro shop nfl shop discount code jordan 4 cheap adidas stores sex toy shop best wigs cheap human hair lace front wigs adidas yeezy foam runner mens stores nfl jerseys men nfl shop discount code

Rather than a culmination of Soler’s practice, Static Nature is a testament to its continued progression from even before its historical beginnings in 1981, during which he held his first solo exhibition at Luz Gallery at 21 years old. Soler dropped out of the UP FIne Arts Program shortly after, and started a young family soon after that, but neither of these things were deterrents to his artistic explorations.

He kept making. There are a total of 30 collages, 14 drawings, three large paintings, and several sculptures, each deliberately selected and carefully considered. This collection has been years in the making.

Soler’s new collage series, conceived during the pandemic, has become a tool for him to keep making art, and to keep trying new things. He has shown a few of them in two shows he has had since the beginning of the pandemic, one at MO_Space and one at The Drawing Room, but some of these pieces up at Blanc Gallery were in gestation since 2020 and have only been finished in time for the show.

Time affects an artist’s output. The pressure of a deadline will perhaps cause a work to be released before it’s ready. “Mahirap ngang malaman kung tapos na, kaya kailangan kapag nag-show, hindi nagmamadali,” he says. “Minsan kailangan tingnan ng matagal bago masabi kung tapos na.” [It’s really hard to know if something is finished. That’s why it’s necessary to not rush things when you are preparing for a show. Sometimes you need to look at something for a while before you know when it’s done.”] He says that spending time with the work, while working on different pieces, allows him to see each piece in a new light.

As for subject matter, Soler’s eye has always been drawn to decay. He finds beauty in nature, but is more inclined to capture things in the process of breaking down.

In his personal life, he has always had an interest in capturing moments and objects of interest on film and video. He used to develop his own black-and-white film, like his brothers Steve and Simon, but the practice has carried on with the rise of digital technology. Now, Soler has the freedom to take photographs without too much thought about the cost of film and developing. He snaps photographs of his family, but often he chooses to capture photographs of his surroundings. On a trip to Paris, he will take pictures of paintings and architecture, but on his camera roll, there will be many more images of garbage piles, strangers and ruins, a glint of the sky.

For a show in MO_Space, Soler exhibited an array of photographs, the camera lens trained on the ground. In each, he’s captured a different landscape, a variety of terrain both urban and rural, and in each seemingly static image, he becomes an intrusion as well as the subject, as his shadow is captured alongside the space he inhabits.

Soler operates as a collector on the field: each walk and venture out into the world is an opportunity to bring something back that he can use for his work, be it a shape, form or object. He calls it an instinctual response, to keep something that stands out in a world that is overstimulating and loud, and to find a place for it elsewhere. Absent of its original context, the object or form or shape is seen anew.

Here and now, it is no different. Each work is a configuration of something – many things – that Soler bears witness to. Nothing is supernatural or beyond what is sensed, but the act of remaking is what sets his work apart. We are invited to see something new, to witness something beyond what we can see for ourselves.