Artist and former sign painter Tauba Auerbach has created a deck of playing cards which will make even playing Go Fish with your six year old niece a mathematical adventure of the highest order. The Functionsdeck uses the four basic math functions to represent the four suits. Instead of red and black, the suits are black on a white background or white on a black background, so the deck is half black and half white, in keeping with Auerbach’s 50/50 series, an exploration the artist makes on the subject of opposites and language. Each suit and its counterpart are opposites…so Addition is black on white, while Subtraction is white on black. These functions cancel out or counteract each other mathematically as well, so they are inversions in both color and in function. The deck is graphically spectacular, and its presentation is simple and elegant, in a debossed linen case with pull out drawer. The cards are graphite center stock with plastic coat. Limited to 250, each deck is hand numbered by the artist.

[One Deck of Cards, Functions]

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