ABOUT LAb[au]
From Sense (aesthesis)
to Sense (semiosis)
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LAb[au], laboratory for art and urbanism
LAb[au] is an artist collective founded in Brussels in 1997 by
Manuel Abendroth and Jérôme Decock.
The name—labo [laboratory] and bau [construction]—encapsulates their approach: between written form and phonetics, between research and praxis, with architecture as a critical framework. The collective develops a transdisciplinary practice with distinct approaches to artworks, installations and public art, each operating at different scales and in different contexts.
Working at the intersection of conceptual art, digital art and architecture, LAb[au] draws on information and communication theory, conceiving art as a form of language. Rather than simply applying its models, the collective explores how they expand artistic thinking.
Here, the ratio of signal to noise becomes a negotiation between sense and nonsense; randomness redefines artistic mastery as the capacity to integrate uncertainty and to operate with possibilities, while stochastic processes open onto an ontology of the possible. The emergence of new colours and the extension of perception beyond the visible spectrum, in turn, challenge established conceptions of colour in art, such as abstraction and the monochrome.
Through these shifts between scientific, linguistic, artistic and philosophical registers, LAb[au] investigates colour, time, signal, language and possibility as fundamental structures through which perception, experience and knowledge are organised—and from which their art is built.
LAb[au]’s artistic research is based on combining these fields and, through their permutation, produces axioms such as the colour of time and the time of colour, the language of colour and colour as language, from which distinct bodies of work emerge, such as Zeitfarbe, Sprachmonochrome, histoires chromatiques and possible times.
Across these bodies of work, LAb[au] shifts the question of representation—a central question in art—to a more fundamental one: representability itself. What matters is not how something is represented, but the conditions under which something becomes perceptible, legible and tangible.
In summary, LAb[au] constructs artistic frameworks within which new relationships and fields of meaning can emerge—for instance, by transcoding otherwise imperceptible noise into legible signs or mixing language like colour by permuting the letters of colour names into possible words. Within these frameworks, LAb[au] paints, writes, calculates, senses and transcodes, continually encountering the limits of perception, the limits of signs and the limits of logic.
This movement along these limits renders their artworks as traces—as possibilities extending across temporal and spatial dimensions that sometimes even elude our immediate experience and imagination. Accordingly, LAb[au] conceives art as visual philosophy, employing contemporary materials and modes of thinking while situating them within a broader art-historical perspective.
Beyond its artistic production, LAb[au]’s transdisciplinary practice extends to curatorships, performances, theoretical essays, artists’ books and editorial projects, drawing on dance, music, graphic design, typography and urban studies. These connections become visible throughout the Praxis Archive.
LAb[au] has exhibited internationally at major museums, institutions and biennials, including the Louvre, MoMA, ZKM, MAAT, Casino Luxembourg and the Venice Biennale. They have realised numerous public artworks worldwide, and their work is held in public and private collections.
LAb[au] is represented by:
DAN Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil
Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach, Brussels, Belgium
Solo Exhibitions — Complete list
2025: Para além da biblioteca, Biblioteca Brasiliana, São Paulo, Brazil
2024: painting, writing, calculating, transcoding, DAN Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil
2024: POSSIBLES | PROBABLES, Botanique, Brussels, Belgium
2024: FARBEN | FERNAB, Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach, Brussels, Belgium
2022: Zeit Zeichen, Zeichen Zeit, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, Heidenheim, Germany
2019: If Then Else, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg
2016: Langage codé, La Patinoire Royale / Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels, Belgium
2015: rouge, vert, bleu, blanc, Centre des arts d’Enghien-les-Bains, Enghien-les-Bains, France
2014: zéro / un, Galerie Denise René, Paris, France
2014: writing, drawing, painting, DAM Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2014: binary Waves, Le Centquatre, Paris, France
2011: Tessel, Musée des Moulages, Lyon, France
2011: framework f5x5x3, Aubette, Strasbourg, France
2010: m0t1v, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne, Germany
Group Exhibitions — Complete list
2025: Atto 2/3 Col Tempo, Galerie Bigaignon × rhinoceros gallery, Rome, Italy
2025: Remarks on Colour, KBK Art Space, Brussels, Belgium
2024: Langages et Imaginaires, La Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, France
2023: The Seduction of the Bureaucrat, De Garage, Mechelen, Belgium
2022: AXIOM #1, TOPO?, Brussels, Belgium
2022: On the Lookout, Fondation CAB, Brussels, Belgium
2021: Order of Operations, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium
2021: X, FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France
2021: Mika Vainio Retrospective, Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland
2020: Transcoding, Société, Brussels, Belgium
2019: Imaging Cities, SongEun Art Space, Seoul, South Korea
2019: D’un soleil à l’autre, Base Sous-marine, Bordeaux, France
2018: Action <-> Reaction: 100 Years of Kinetic Art, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
2018: A Brave New World, MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal
2018: Untitled (Monochrome), Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York, USA
2018: TIME, Bastide Projets, Marseille, France
2017: Artists & Robots, Expo 2017, Grand Palais, Astana, Kazakhstan
2017: Eutopia, Museum M, Leuven, Belgium
2016: Terminal P, La Panacée, Montpellier, France
2016: ACT, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea
2016: Digital Abstraction, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel, Switzerland
2015: Prosopopées, Le Centquatre, Paris, France
2015: Fold/Unfold, KIKK Festival, Galerie du Beffroi, Namur, Belgium
2015: Exo-Evolution, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
2015: Noir et Blanc, Galerie Denise René, Paris, France
2014: Physicality, Musée d’Art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
2014: Artist/Novelist, MoMA, New York, USA
2013: Poème Numérique, Atomium, Brussels, Belgium
2013: Noise, Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2012: Artificial Garden, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
2012: Space Oddity, Grand-Hornu Images, Boussu, Belgium
2010: West Arch, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany
2010: From Kinetic to Digital Art, Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence, France
2009: Young Belgian Painters Award, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium
2009: Holy Fire, iMAL, Brussels, Belgium
2008: Emoção Artificial, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil
2007: Architecture of the Night, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
2006: Neo Beginners, Witte de With, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
2003: Urban Lab, Bauhaus Dessau, Dessau, Germany
2003: Polygon Den[c]ity, New Museum, New York, USA
2002: Les Cinémas du futur, Le Pass, Mons, Belgium
2000: La Beauté, Clos des Trams, Avignon, France
2000: TransArchitectures 02/03, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Public Artworks — Complete list
2031: Source of Uncertainty, Podiumkunstengebouw, Leuven, Belgium
2026: Listen to the Universe, RTT Building, Kortrijk, Belgium
2026: fLUX, Union Station, Toronto, Canada
2024: XXXXXXXX, Stadtbibliothek Heidenheim, Germany
2019: Zäit Wuert, Casino Luxembourg, Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg
2019: Palimpsest, Wijkpark De Porre, Ghent, Belgium
2016: 365, Quai 10 and La Vigie, Charleroi, Belgium
2016: Lux Aeternae, AZF Memorial, Toulouse, France
Permanent and Accessible Artworks in Private and Corporate Collections, Selection
2025: What colours tell us about …?, Cloud Seven – Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels, Belgium
2021: yes, no: perhaps, Hager Stiftung, Blieskastell, Germany
2017: origamiSquare 59 squares, Linklaters, Madrid, Spain
2017: origamiCeiling 160 Rhombi, Reynaerts, Duffel, Belgium
2017: origamiCeiling 20 squares 54 kites, Collection Cosnova, Frankfurt, Germany
2017: origamiPenrose 71 kites and darts, Collection Aegon, Amersfoort, the Netherlands
2016: origamiSquare 192 squares, Linklaters, Brussels, Belgium
2016: SwarmDots, Collection Fidelity, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2015: chronoPrints, Liedts-Meesen Foundation / Zebrastraat, Ghent, Belgium
Additional works are held in private collections worldwide.
Artworks in Institutional Collections, Selection
2024: tonerchromeS, MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain, Montpellier, France
2021: PI, Museum of Cryptography, Moscow, Russia
2018: 2 × 540 kHz, Mika Vainio + LAb[au], Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland
2016: EOD02, Frederik De Wilde + LAb[au], ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
2006: pixFlow02, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil
Monographs and Exhibition Catalogues — Complete list
2024: POSSIBLES | PROBABLES, exhibition catalogue, Botanique and Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach
2019: If Then Else, exhibition catalogue, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg
2016: Calculations, Permutations, Notations, exhibition catalogue, The Major Gallery, London, UK
2015: Concepts, Modes, Systems, exhibition catalogue, Centre des arts d’Enghien-les-Bains, France – ISBN 978-2-916639-38-3
2010: MetaDesign, monograph, Les presses du réel, Dijon, France – ISBN 978-2-84066-404-8
2010: m0t1v, exhibition catalogue, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne, Germany
Festivals — Complete list
L’Ososphère (Strasbourg), CTM (Berlin), TodaysArt (The Hague), Scopitone (Nantes),
Luminato (Toronto), Némo (Paris), KIKK (Namur), ELEKTRA (Montréal) and Sónar (Barcelona), among others.
Art Fairs — Complete list
Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, SP-Arte, ARCOmadrid, Art Brussels, BRAFA, FIAC, Art Vienna…
2023: Solo booth with Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach (Brussels) at OFFSCREEN, Grand Garage Haussmann, Paris, France
2016: Solo booth with Galerie Denise René (Paris) at Art Brussels, Brussels, Belgium