Été 78, where art meets life

Été 78 is the personal project set up seven years ago by the collectors Nicole Osanne and Olivier Gevart in Brussels. A non-for profit space through which they share their passion: the support and exhibition of the work of contemporary artists.

As Olivier Gevart said in his recent conversation with the curator Tiago de Abreu Pinto for ARTORAMA, Été 78 is a space «where art meets life». We invite you to listen their podcast here, and discover how one day he decided to leave behind his former financial career and devote himself to social projects of circular economy. How his relationship with art became a way of discovering, of generating concerns, of asking questions about all that surrounds us, and crystallising in their philanthropic project.

«3 Collectionneurs» is one of the exhibitions that Été 78 organises annually. This year, in its eighth edition, the show includes works from the French collector Edgard F. Grima, -among which is the piece by Cristina Garrido-, and Pierre Lombart‘s SAFFCA collection, committed to disseminating the work of Southern African artists for the last twenty-five years.

In addition to «3 Collectionneurs» they also organise solo exhibitions presenting the work of artists whom they support with funds for production, including remuneration.

Left to right: Ian Witthlesea, Elsa Werth, Enric Farrés, Stéphanie Saadé and Cristina Garrido. exhibition view, photo Regular Studio.
Left to right: Ian Witthlesea, Elsa Werth, Enric Farrés, Stéphanie Saadé and Cristina Garrido. exhibition view, photo Regular Studio.

Along with the piece by Cristina Garrido, «3 Collectionneurs»  includes works by Ignasi Aballí, Vincen Beeckman, Denmark, Els Dietvorst, Enric Farrés Duran, Kendell Geers, David Goldblatt, Nan Goldin, Charbel-joseph H. Boutros, Themba Khumalo, Benon Lutaaya, Gerhard Marx, Kagiso Patrick Mautloa, mountaincutters, Pratchaya Phinthong, Tracey Rose, Stéphanie Saadé, Yann Serandour, Elsa Werth and Ian Whittlesea.

Local Colour is a Foreign Invention

The work by Cristina Garrido, Local Colour is a Foreign Invention [British Islands], belongs to her series for which she takes as her starting point a well-known phrase by Borges that goes on to say «…that arises from others looking at us, not from what we are».

Cristina Garrido, Local Colour is a Foreign Invention (British Islands), 2020.
Cristina Garrido, Local Colour is a Foreign Invention (British Islands), 2020.

In this series, Garrido questions whether it is possible to find out the local colour of certain specific geographical areas. She has researched the representations of the sky made by painters from different periods in specific geographical areas from the seventeenth century to 2020. From the compilation of fragments collected from museums’ websites she creates a grid to organise them chromatically according to the Pantone scale.

By adding the name of the author, its title and the date of its execution, she generates “jumps in time that connect the experience of artists from different origins and generations in front of a landscape”.

To this same series belongs the one that brings together representations of Paris sky, The local colour is a foreign invention [Paris], which is part of Francesca Thyssen’s TBA21 collection.

Have you seen Cristina Garrido’s conversation with the collectors Mónica García and Manuel Urbano, Lea, Celia and Diego?

You can’t miss it, thirteen minutes in which they transmit us their love for art and artists.

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