-Does the stone show the colours, or do the colours show the stone?-
The first
This is the first artist book Uta and Barbara made together. And to our great surprise, the beauty of a stone coincided with the beauty of colours. And still, when we go through the publication, we whisper questioningly: does the stone show the colours, or do the colours show the stone?
Structural Colours
Barbara wanted to try to approach the effect of structural colours with the transparent riso ink. Structural colours are colours that appear and change when you change your point of view. They are the colours you see glistening in the feathers of a peacock, or in a soap bubble, an oil slick or the wings of a Morpho butterfly.
They are colours that are, according to Barbara completely unjustly, excluded from the general colour theory. Because they are free colours, uncontrollable colours, changing colours, ungraspable colours, the first authors of books in which colours were categorized deliberately omitted these colours.
So Barbara was on a mission to make work with these colours and when she told Uta about it, Uta got an idea. Why not depict a beautiful stone that also shows signs of these elusive colours? And layer by layer, structure by texture, to see with the crayon-like ink, whether the stone, the riso ink and the structural colours could show themselves in this collaboration?
TE/OR/GR
GR/TE/OR/OR
OR/OR
GR
TE -Teal, OR – Orange and GR – Grey
We printed the first version of this book in three colours. Grey, Teal and Neon Orange. And we sent the very first copy to Switzerland. To the residence Casa Sasso. After which we were invited to work and stay there for a month as an artist duo in their artist residency in the summer of 2022. Only then did we find out that Sasso is the Italian word for stone. And we sent them a stone book, a book full of riso stones, such a lucky and beautiful coincidence. That is why the book, in short, is now called the ‘Sasso book’ by us.
In the meantime, several series of prints have emerged that also bear this name. We have the Winter Solstice Sasso series and the Midsummer Sasso series.
The stone pictured has been collected by Uta in the mountain area around Domodossola.
Von Farben, die in Steinen Wohnen
No.1 | Teal – Orange – Grey
24 Riso prints (printed by Knust's Riso dependance in Amsterdam) in 2021.
Artist Book, Signed and numbered.
by Uta Neumann and Barbara Collé
New handheld Artist Book Edition
We hope to have a new edition of the book ready around the autumn equinox. The book will still be bound by hand, but will be smaller in size. And contain a colour story. We will keep you informed.