top of page

colour, language, signal

time and possibility

as

interconnected fields of artistic research 

#colourtime  #colourlanguage  #timelanguage ...

artworks
painting, writing, calculating, sensing, transcoding

​

installations
available, archive, in progress

​

public art
public space, indoor, ongoing, proposals

LAb[au] Editions presents art in the form of publications. Many recent projects have generated libraries, archives, and cabinets whose conceptual frameworks rely on reproduction, iteration, seriality, and multiplication.

​

Many of these works emerge from extensive processes of research and development. These processes often generate extensive series of results that require reproducible material forms—digital prints, photocopies, colour samples, index cards, folders, or other formats. In these formats, the underlying concepts find precise material expression. For some, the edition constitutes the very form through which the work exists.

 

LAb[au] Editions creates a dedicated field in which these works can be produced under viable conditions and circulated directly at accessible prices.

Through an autonomous structure of publication and distribution, LAb[au] Editions preserves the integrity of each work while remaining complementary to our collaborations with galleries.

 

The value of these artist books, monographs, multiples, and limited or open editions lies in their distinct material and conceptual qualities, in the knowledge and experience they make accessible, and in the engagement with our work and research that they enable.

​

​

Made to circulate—to be read, handled, collected, and shared.

Front view of drachenblutrot: a red field above a pale field, with the colour anagram printed across their boundary.

drachenblutrot

PRINT EDITION

drachenblutrot
Colour names: BLECHROT + TUNDRA
German Colour Anagram
from the series:
What Colours Tell Us About ...? 

drachenblutrot – dragon's blood refers to a dark-red plant resin, named for its blood-like colour, not to a mineral or a mythical substance. It was used as a colourant in mediaeval manuscript illumination and in paints and varnishes.
 
There is a particularly beautiful connection to language: the red tongues of fire in Giotto’s Pentecost were probably painted with dragon’s blood. The painting depicts the moment people begin speaking in different languages.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Only a selection of colour anagrams is presented in the store.
Download the catalogue of available English, French and German anagrams (PDF) →

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  • Edition Details

    Year: 2025
    Size: 25.5 cm × 35.5 cm
    Digital print mounted on wood
    Signed, numbered and stamped on the reverse
    Edition of 3 + 1 artist proof
    Produced to order

    This is Edition: 2/3

  • Description

    drachenblutrot

     - follows a strict rule: the letters of BLECHROT and TUNDRA are rearranged to form a third colour name. Yet this logical operation produces an image from mythology—dragon’s blood. The name also belongs to the material history of colour: dragon’s blood is a red resin once used as a colourant. Here, logic does not dispel myth; it brings myth and colour together.

     

    The anagram slowly recalls the dragons and knights of mediaeval and Renaissance painting. As we look, the red field suddenly becomes an armour-red sky above a pale tundra. The word drachenblutrot lies, like a trace, on the horizon between them. Through the rearrangement of two colour names, a landscape—and a story—comes into view. The work operates like an ekphrasis: language takes the place of the painted scene, while the two colour fields form its setting.

     

    What Colours Tell Us About…? is an open-ended body of individual colour anagrams. The format of 25.5 × 35.5 cm was developed specifically as the edition format of the project. It gives selected anagrams a common format, while the proportion of each colour field remains determined by the number of letters contributed by its colour name.

    The edition format allows individual anagrams to circulate independently and to enter into new linguistic and chromatic constellations.

  • Shipping

    This artwork is produced to order. Please allow up to two weeks for production before dispatch. Shipping costs are calculated according to destination. The work is shipped in protective art packaging.

€350.00Price
bottom of page