COSMOS: PATRICE DE SANTA COLOMA DEVELOPED A RESIDENCY IN SAN LUIS POTOSÍ BETWEEN COLOR, MATTER, AND TERRITORY

COSMOS is an artist residency and exhibition presented by CONOCIMIENTO in collaboration with AETHER Gallery. Conceived as a process of on-site research and production, the project emerged from the question: what happens when an artistic practice built around color, light, and the transformation of matter comes into contact with a specific territory? Throughout August, Patrice de Santa Coloma developed an unprecedented body of work in San Luis Potosí, inspired by the landscapes, textures, history, and luminous intensity of the Altiplano. The residency functioned not merely as a precursor to the exhibition but as its core: the works do not arrive fully resolved, but are transformed through the encounter between an outside gaze and a local reality.

Qui dit Patrice dit couleurs. Patrice de Santa Coloma, a Franco-Argentine artist who lives and works in Bordeaux, has pursued an ongoing investigation into the relationship between color, light, pigments, and the passage of time. His practice brings together painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and installation, drawing connections between contemporary art, art history, and science. Fascinated by Renaissance pictorial techniques and by the physical processes of materials, the artist understands painting as a living organism: matter that is altered by light, by aging, and by the gaze of the viewer who contemplates it. This line of research has led him to collaborate with specialists in chemistry and heritage conservation through the Art and Science FACTS program at the University of Bordeaux.

COSMOS also extends the dialogue initiated in PRIMITIVI, an exhibition presented in 2024 at Les Glacières de Bordeaux, curated by Laurence Lévèque and Julio G. Mirabal E. Building on that earlier investigation into forms, signs, and correspondences between the Amerindian and European continents, Patrice continues to explore the relationships between pre-Columbian palettes, Renaissance pictorial traditions, and the material memory of color.

Series such as Pareidolia, How They See Us, and Coalescences, along with a cosmogonic palette inspired by the cardinal points and the symbolic organization of the cosmos, establish a field of research that was revisited and transformed over the course of the residency.

COSMOS is the first exhibition produced by CONOCIMIENTO, a thought platform directed by Julio G. Mirabal E., born of the conviction that knowledge, sensibility, and art arise everywhere and are enriched through encounter. In collaboration with AETHER Gallery, the project seeks to open a cultural bridge between Mexico and France from San Luis Potosí, generating new ways of approaching new realities.

The exhibition can be seen through the end of September 2026 at AETHER Gallery, Graciano Sánchez 220-A, Lindavista, 78220, San Luis Potosí, S.L.P., Mexico.