Madalina Zaharia – DEBT.

About

Over the past nine months Madalina Zaharia has been occupied and distracted by the most assiduous and unavoidable task of paying her debt. She has been working long and hard, slowly and achingly reversing the licentious process of turning negative space into things. Lines have been drawn under objects and shapes, and value has been derived from the most hypothetical and meaningless actions. Her bank account is her sketchbook, constantly changing and shifting under the perpetual pressure of ideological white noise. Her balance sheets are her most recent and serviceable artwork. Art. Work.

Although her credit score is still discouraged and depressed, her hand is engaged in a continuous and determined erasing of inscriptions and violent images of alliance. This drawing is endless. It has started way before any material exchange has ever happened and feeds itself on the eternal deferral of payments and contours into the future. Each brushstroke is a transaction, a flawless and inexcusable combination of internet banking and aesthetic aspirations. There is very little left to the wandering imagination, as everything you see is a direct replica of her immediate and immovable reality. This artwork is built on beauty, uncertainty and direct debits.

The exhibition is an attempt to defy and dismiss financial disaster. A tale of repeated forms and recurring patterns, a ritual during which numbers and sums become abstruse illustrations. A personal account of art making as book-keeping.

MADALINA ZAHARIA grew up in Romania and studied at the University of the Arts, Bucharest; Byam Shaw and the Royal College of Art, London, graduating in 2012. Recent shows include The Staging of an Exhibition Ivan Gallery (solo), Bucharest (2016); Say What? ASC Gallery, London (2016); Identify Your Limitations, Acknowledge The Periphery Vitrine Gallery, London (2016); Bench, Tintype, London (2016); London Open 2015, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Feel the discourse!, Guest Projects, London (2015); Hidden in plain sight, Norwich University of the Arts  Gallery, Norwich (2015); LOOKING LONDON, TALKING TOKYO, window installation at Tintype, London (2015); A Leap of Faith, The Living Room, London (2015): The Forgotten Pioneer Movement, District Kunst und Kulturforderung, Berlin (2014); A well furnished room, Ingrid Projects, (solo) London (2014); Kltz.Pmz.AAAAA!, Tintype (solo), London (2013); the Blue Plastic Bag project, a commission from A Million Minutes (2013); The Round Manual at Arch Collective (2013); Hospitable Plains, Brussels Arts Factory, Brussels (2012); We were real pirates, a performance and live radio broadcast in collaboration with airstudio; Re-Read, An Assembly Project, Trinity Buoy Wharf (2011); Pas Pas Chi Chi, a performance for the sea, Coastal Currents, Hastings (2010); I Know a Friend That Knows a Friend, Het Poortgebouw, Rotterdam (2009).