The sought-after automotive artist presents a self-directed collection shaped by memory, ambition, faith, and the imagined life.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES — July 2026 — Contemporary Filipino artist Marc Abasolo presents his first solo exhibition, Chrome Dreams of Elsewhere (Motion, Memory, and the Imagined Life), opening on July 18, 2026 at Spruce Gallery in Ortigas Center. The exhibition is curated by Ric Gindap, with exhibition staging by Allan “Bolty” Gañgo.

Abasolo has earned a following within rare and vintage automobile and watch-collecting circles for his commissioned paintings of prized cars and important timepieces. His collector base, developed largely through referrals and private introductions, includes prominent patrons in the Philippines and abroad. His works occupy the upper reaches of the private-commission market, where access depends as much on trust as it does on technical ability.

Chrome Dreams of Elsewhere brings that experience into Abasolo’s first collection governed entirely by his own artistic vision.

The exhibition developed through conversations with Gindap, who recognized in Abasolo’s accomplished automotive portraits the beginnings of a wider and more personal language. He encouraged the artist to work without a collector selecting the subject, model, viewpoint, or desired likeness.

The car remained but the destination became Marc’s.

Across the exhibition, familiar automotive forms move into unexpected emotional and visual territory. They appear suspended, transformed, submerged, tightly cropped, or intensified through color and pattern. The polish and allure that first drew collectors to Abasolo’s work remain present, now carrying childhood longing, spiritual trust, restlessness, and lives projected farther down the road.

“Marc had already earned the confidence of serious collectors who entrusted him with objects central to their lives,” says Gindap. “I wanted to see what he would paint when every decision belonged to him. The works retain his understanding of automotive beauty while revealing a much larger imagination at work.”

Abasolo’s fascination with cars began in childhood. His mother brought him to toy stores, where he studied miniature automobiles his practical parents rarely bought. Back home, paper and pen became his substitute collection. Drawing allowed him to keep through attention what he could not carry out of the shop.

That early distance between desire and possession still provides the work with its engine.

The exhibition title reflects the territory Abasolo has travelled ever since. Chrome belongs to the engineered object and its polished seductions. Dreams hold the remembered toy, the projected future, and the person one imagines becoming behind the wheel. Elsewhere remains the destination that shifts whenever it draws near.

The automobile carries a particular charge in the Philippines, where jeepney culture has long treated the vehicle as a moving surface for ingenuity, family history, faith, humor, and visual invention. Manila contributes its own complicated theatre. A jeepney, delivery van, family sedan, and Lamborghini may come from radically different economic lives, yet gridlock gathers them into the same republic of brake lights.

Wealth improves the leather, air-conditioning, and quality of despair. It cannot always purchase the next four metres.

This mixture of aspiration, pleasure, frustration, and social meaning runs beneath Chrome Dreams of Elsewhere. The car becomes a way of picturing movement through life and the future self waiting somewhere beyond the windscreen.

The exhibition arrives as automotive identity itself faces intense public debate. Jaguar’s fashion-led Type 00 and Ferrari’s electric Luce have disturbed visual memories attached to celebrated marques, revealing how personally people guard the shapes through which they first learned to desire a car.

Abasolo enjoys freedoms unavailable to the corporate designer protecting global brand equity. In painting, the vehicle may dream, bloom, descend, acquire animal instincts, or develop a private weather system. Recognition survives through emotional cues carried for years.

Born in Manila in 1997, Abasolo is largely self-taught. He began developing his professional art practice during the pandemic through drawings and commissioned automotive paintings. He attended Civil Engineering at De La Salle University for nearly four years before transferring to Enderun Colleges, where he pursued Business Administration. He later took Marketing for the Art World at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and founded LAPASSION ART in 2020.

Chrome Dreams of Elsewhere introduces an artist already familiar with the private worlds of collectors, now choosing what the automobile will carry for him.

The cars still look expensive and have developed inner lives.

Venue
Spruce Gallery, Ortigas Center, Metro Manila

Artists
Marc Abasolo

Exhibition Dates
July 18 – August 8, 2026

Gallery Hours
Monday – Saturday | 11 AM – 9 PM

Website
www.spruce.gallery/art

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/sprucegalleryph/?hl=en#

Contact
Lyann Cadiao / Grazeel Gindap / Keifer Villacarlos
hello@spruce.gallery

About Artist

Marc Abasolo (b. 1997, Manila) is a contemporary Filipino artist whose work explores the automobile as a vessel for ambition, memory, faith, desire, and the imagined life.

Largely self-taught, he began drawing cars in childhood, recreating with paper and pen the toys and vehicles that first held his attention. He returned to art with greater focus during the pandemic, moving from sketches and commissioned automotive portraits toward a more personal and increasingly varied painting practice.

Through referrals and private introductions, Abasolo has built a discerning collector base that includes prominent business leaders and private patrons in the Philippines and abroad. His commissions often portray rare automobiles, luxury cars, and important watch collections, with works acquired at the upper end of the local private-commission market.

Abasolo attended Civil Engineering at De La Salle University for nearly four years before transferring to Enderun Colleges, where he pursued Business Administration. He later took Marketing for the Art World at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York. He founded LAPASSION ART in 2020 and also serves as Vice President for Sales at MJ & Sons Enterprises Incorporated.

His recent work gives the automobile a wider emotional life, carrying childhood longing, spiritual trust, movement, pause, and the continuing distance between present circumstances and the life still taking shape ahead.

(Text and images courtesy of SPRUCE Gallery)