Artist Tauba Auerbach has designed a series of playing cards which builds on her 50/50 work, an exploration of opposites and language. 50/50 culminated in a book published by Deitch Projects in 2008 titled 50/50, 100 pages 100 patterns, 50% white, 50% black. The series One Deck of Cards consists of two different decks, one based on mathematical functions and the other on geometric shapes, typical of the artist’s highly acclaimed visual arts. Auerbach created original art as well as three new typefaces, king, queen, and knave, for the project. Decks come with an informational fold out and are encased in a hand numbered, blind-de-bossed, linen slide box with ribbon lift and pull-tab. Each of the two decks is produced in an edition of 250 with 10 artist proofs and was produced in collaboration with Brent Dzekciorius of DZEK, an editor and publisher of design and art multiples.

Functions Deck

The Functions Deck uses the basic math functions + - x ÷ as suits. The face cards are platonic solids and the jokers are ≠ and ∞ (perhaps torturous but also enchanting ideas/symbols.) 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 the 50/50 series. 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.

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