Palm Springs, CA
Before I ever walked into Jaco Moretti’s gallery, I was already judging the 2 posters that were placed at the doorway to the gallery space.
The posters did what posters are designed to do: stop me. They often telegraph an idea of what the show is about. But in this case, I actually thought that I was looking at the work of 2 different artists. The official poster is included at the top of this article. The image is very traditional; A painting of a man, sitting on a blanket, in the dunes, with his dog. The second, a blue graphic on a white background, was a completely nude man (not shown), attractive with dark hair, outstretched on what appeared to be a blue blanket. And my first reaction was quick, almost reflexive. In Palm Springs, we see a lot of imagery that leans on the immediate shorthand of the male nude—sometimes playful, sometimes overt, sometimes purely decorative, and often immediately sexual. The visual message does it’s job. Sometimes the message lands so quickly that the story never gets a chance to arrive. So you don’t always get the deeper story. Two different images are from a single artist. Different phases or changing perspectives from the same individual, all reflecting what he is seeing or remembering, what’s right in front of him.
Quick judgment: that’s the trap of our screen-based lives. We scroll past thousands of images a day—partly because we’re searching for something we can’t quite name, and partly because advertisers understand how to put desire in front of us. But Bran Sólo’s work isn’t built for scrolling. It asks for something most screens don’t: time, stillness, and really seeing. We often judge the cover before reading the book.
As I did, and hoping, I can help you from making the same assumptions.
Bran’s story comes first
What shifted everything for me was realizing that Dunas de Sal is not “a show about nude men.” It’s a personal journey—one the artist is offering with both confidence and risk.
On his own site, Bran describes living with a functional difference in his vision—seeing things duplicated “like a kaleidoscope,” where his mind interprets what it can and “does not always get it right.” He connects that way of seeing to the emotional world of his characters: a sense of distance, fragility, longing, and a quiet ache that doesn’t need to announce itself to be real.
He puts it plainly—and powerfully: “My characters are me. My characters are you.”
That line matters, because it reframes the entire show. The nude isn’t there to “sell” anything. It’s there because vulnerability is the subject. A vulnerability that often affects each one of us.
In Bran’s own words, the salt flats on the beaches “where I am from”—those untouched white mountains of salt—are not just scenery. They’re memory, contradiction, and metaphor: beauty born of evaporation, something present because everything else has receded. The dunes and the sea aren’t backdrops; they’re emotional architecture.”
That’s why Spain kept coming to mind as I moved through the work. Not as an “art reference,” but as a human one.
In our travels in Spain, we met so many people who were warm, open, and willing to have an honest conversation—sometimes in imperfect English, sometimes with gestures and laughter filling the gaps. You felt welcomed into the moment. You felt seen. And lately, that kind of casual, human willingness feels harder to find in America. We often seem guarded, hurried, or braced for the next confrontation.
Bran’s work carries a contradiction, vulnerability, and self awareness. To feel free enough to share, to expose. It comes with the recognition of who we are and the risk that comes with exposure. For Bran, that’s visually, physically and emotionally.
Salt, dunes, and the fleeting human moment
Bran’s own statement about Dunas de Sal makes the emotional target unmistakable: figures who arrive alone, who wait, who search, who hope for something that might not stay. The Mediterranean becomes a metaphor—embrace and dissolution, preservation and burn.
Even in a small excerpt, you can feel what he’s aiming at:
“My characters—vulnerable, distant—search in the sea for something they cannot name… In the dunes where damp skin tastes of salt, nothing endures.”
“I wanted ‘the Salt Dunes’ to speak of encounters that burn quickly and fade…”
That’s the world he built: not fantasy, but the truth behind so many human moments—connection that flashes, longing that lingers, tenderness that arrives with limits attached.
Why the nudity is both power and risk
Here’s what I didn’t understand from the posters alone: removing clothing in this work isn’t a gimmick. It’s a psychological decision.
The figures are exposed, yes—but so is the artist. Because once you put that kind of openness on a wall, you invite judgment. You invite projection. You invite the lazy read.
And that’s where I had to be honest with myself.
I was so quick to categorize the work that I nearly missed the point: Dunas de Sal is offering us a chance to recognize how bias—personal, social, cultural—can blind us. Not in a scolding way. In a human way. Bran accepts the danger of being misunderstood and places it right in front of us anyway, almost as if to say: Look closer. Stay longer. Let the surface dissolve and see.
What it changed in me—and in my writing
By the time I moved through the show, having a conversation with Jaco Moretti, my first impression felt small. Not wrong, exactly, but shortsighted and just incomplete. The range of work expanded around the gallery. Full color paintings like the one on the poster, beautiful line work, and shapes, that define the figure. Then there are the works on blue paper. Graphic works of a beautiful nude men, on the blue blanket-that has to be clearly seen, to ensure you don’t miss important details. There are full color, sepia, and blue tinted polaroids. Black ink drawings on white paper. And then some additional blue on white multi-media works that are one of a kind, mono-prints. These are more lyrical, and playful. This show was well curated by both the artist and Jaco. There is something for everyone, and an expansive price point, designed to ensure if you liked his work, you had choices. This worked well for the artist, the gallery owner and the patrons / audience, who made the decision to purchase. The works that they purchased, the artwork that spoke to them most.
For me the longer I sat with Bran’s images, the more I felt that quiet shift that only happens when art does its real job: it slows you down enough to notice your own mind at work. It made me more careful—more patient—both as a viewer and as an artist / writer. It reminded me that a gallery isn’t a feed. It’s a conversation you can choose to enter, and if you do, you owe it more than a glance.
That’s also why people buy art works. Not to decorate a wall, but to keep an emotional truth within reach—to let the conversation continue at home, on ordinary days, when memory fades and you want to feel something real again. And creating that opportunity is both the work of Bran Sólo and Jaco Moretti. And to their credit, it makes for a very successful exhibit.
A closing invitation
If you go, don’t go looking for “another show of beautiful nude men.”
Go looking for what Bran is actually offering: a landscape of salt and waiting, a tenderness that doesn’t pretend to last forever, and a vulnerable honesty that asks you to examine what you thought you saw at first glance.
And if you catch yourself judging the cover—good. And then to question that judgment. That’s part of the journey, that’s where the conversation starts.
Because Dunas de Sal isn’t asking you to agree with it. It’s asking you to see it.
Bran Sólo lives and works in Spain, and originally from Abarán, in the Murcia region of Spain.
Dunas de Sal (The Salt Dunes) is being shown at Jaco Moretti Arts, located at 577 East Sunny Dunes Road, Palm Springs, California 92264 . The gallery’s listed hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM, and it is closed on Mondays. The exhibition opened with a reception on Saturday, December 13, 2025 (5:00 PM–8:00 PM), and the show runs through Sunday, January 4, 2026.
If you’d like to contact the artist directly, Bran Sólo can be reached via his website contact page, and his listed email is bran@bransolo.com. If you’d like to contact the gallery, Jaco Moretti Arts can be reached through the contact form on its official site; the gallery also lists info@jacomoretti.com or www.jacomoretti.com
About the author Marty Treinen is an author, artist, arts/museum educator, and co-founder of Creative Core International, where he helped define Universal Creative Intelligence™ (UCI) that offers leadership development and educational services. UCI is a framework designed to strengthen creativity, emotional intelligence, learning in real time, collaboration and focus. The very foundation for exceptional leadership. His background spans fine art, film, theater, and museum education. Marty’s mission is to bring human-centric AI, and UCI learning systems to schools, communities, and organizations worldwide.
As a columnist for The Palm Springs Tribune, Marty covers theater, film, visual and performing arts, human-centric AI, and cultural events throughout the Coachella Valley. His reviews are known for their honesty, authenticity, clarity, and deep respect for the power of the arts, to enhance our lives.
You can contact him at, service.to.others.cci@gmail.com
The cover images are courtesy of Bran Sólo © and Jaco Moretti Arts.