We invite you on Wednesday 20th January 2016, 7 pm, to the opening of the exhibition Between the total of facts in my life and the sum of my works doesn’t exist a bijective function, Cristina David’s second solo show at Ivan Gallery. Between 7-9 pm the Workout performance will take place.
 
In mathematics, a function is bijective if it’s at the same time injective and surjective. It can be described by the formula: f : A →B is bijection ⇔ ∀ y ∈ B, ∃! x ∈ A so that f(x) = y, which means that each element from set B has an unique correspondent in set A, and vice-versa.
 
The function is a relationship that connects sets of elements. For example, one takes two sets, infinite on an abstract level, but finite in time and space on an individual one: the art and life of an artist. Those inside the artistic field (the artists themselves, the art critics, historians or theorists) as well as those outside it (the public) have imagined throughout time functions that can be established between these two sets, as general frames or individualised versions from case to case. At present, this function’s domain and codomain tend to overlap and equal one another, but they have been engaged in causal relationships – when the voyeur public or some artist’s exegete extracted significant biographical data and turned it into artistic mythologies – or in a state of collaboration and interdependence, when 20th century’s avant-gardes or neoavant-gardes tried to remove the limits between art and life and generate only bijective functions for the two fields’ elements (or to blow up the sets, the system and their “mathematics” altogether).
 
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Inside this exhibition Cristina David investigates and tests her own version for the explicit function between artistic practice and personal existence. Though consciously working with elements extracted from recent events in her life, passed through the filter of the artistic act and judgement, the sum of Cristina’s works does not confine to these connections, but includes new and independent solutions. Mathematics, humour or (self)irony, text and site-specific installations are the main tools engaged in this research. The inroad in the resulting function requires effort in the advancement through statistics, trainings, calligraphy exercises, video letters and a novel with (another) happy ending.
 
Cristina David’s (b. 1979) artistic practice employs text, photography and video as main means of expression and documenting the artist’s personal and peculiar view on the world, herself and the passing of time. Her projects bring forth more than often performance, gestures and installations with a playful and ironic, overall conceptual twist. With a BFA at the Photo-Video Department from the National University of Arts in Bucharest and a MFA from the Art Academy Of Bergen, Norway, Cristina David was engaged in various artistic residencies, in Seydisfjordur, Iceland (2015), Vienna, Austria (2014), Santa Monica, California (2012), Bratislava, Slovakia (2011), etc. Her works have been shown in exhibitions such as “The School of Kyiv”, Kyiv Biennial 2015, “Few Were Happy with their Condition: Video and Photography in Romania”, Kunsthalle Winterthur (2015), “What about (y)our Memory?” (2014) and “Good Girls. Memory, Desire, Power” (2013), The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, “Involuntary Memory”, The University of California Irvine University Art Galley/Room, Los Angeles, USA (2013), “Global without Globalisation: From Mathematics to China”, Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2012), „Dump Time. For a Practice of Horizontality”, Shedhalle, Zurich (2011), in Manifesta8, Murcia, Cartagena (2010), “Blind Date”, Museum of Contemporary Art of Finland, Helsinki (2006). She was awarded the Henkel Art Award, Romania, in 2011 and won the First Prize at the “Alternative Film/Video 2006”, Belgrade. Cristina David lives and works in Bucharest, Romania.
 
Special thanks: Ștefan David, Michael Ehn, Kwadwo Gyan, Mikkel Rosengaard, Mariana Szoboszlay, tranzit.ro/Iasi.
 
The exhibition can be visited until 24 March 2016, Wednesday-Saturday, 11-19, Sunday and Monday by appointment.
 
Photo credits: Ștefan Sava, Odin Moise.
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