Soler Santos, Luis Santos, Jigger Cruz, Dina Gadia
Recent Prints
November 12, 2011 - December 3, 2011
The recent prints of Soler Santos touch on the notion of totality or completeness. But, not in the way of an absolute yet improbable condition like utopia. Rather, the works evoke a sense of interconnectedness, of being holistic, by providing an understanding of the parts as they relate to the whole. Thus, the prints give an impression of networks, as lines crisscross the picture surface like the elastic drips of an abstract expressionist painting, or the virtual intersections of cybernetic grids along the information highway, or city streets mapped through satellites that produce geo-information. A further investigation would reveal that the images are not as nondescript as they look, but rather more natural in form through the silhouette of a trellis or a tree canopy. This embrace leads one to think of the interconnectivity of all things, especially in light of recent calamities induced by nature, with man as apparent incognizant instigator. The works of Soler Santos therefore become symbolic abstractions of nature’s plight amidst the encroachment of technology in contemporary life. As such, the painterly smears applied on a couple of his works could be seen as violent pangs of nature. The chromatic modules in grid-like fashion found at the center of this global picture would seem to stress structure, a return to equilibrium, or a call for natural balance. It appears that Soler Santos is pushing the techniques of printmaking to make the mechanically reproduced image more organic, spontaneous, or gestural. He thus succeeds in breaking the confines of his medium by opening the compositional grid to create flows that allow fresh new beginnings and possibilities for further growth, continued expansion, and endless expression.
Soler Santos even succeeds in extending his inspiration to another generation of artists, by providing multiple practices of the medium while connecting various expressions. Luis Santos explores assorted archives of mechanically reproduced images, layering and colliding data to take the form of palimpsest, that seem to challenge the depth of knowledge systems in order to promulgate a new order of meaning. Jigger Cruz negates the literacy of images, effacing its composition with his own indelible mark making that serves as a seal of inner value – an iconoclast’s joy. Dina Gadia presents the failure to communicate as a step towards the production of new alternate meanings. Her deconstruction of mass media signs conspires to present a comedy of errors, reveling within while being lost in translation, and provides joyful relief in the anxious vacuum of meaning.
Text by Arvin Flores
The Department of Avant-Garde Clichés presents Recent Prints by Soler Santos, Luis Santos, Jigger Cruz, and Dina Gadia, which trace the networked links formed by ecological consciousness, data mining, iconographical negation, and language failure that provide a new map in the consciousness of printmaking.
