Barbara Z. Sungur: Precarious Balances Series

Andrew Brooks was Assistant Editor of Ethos magazine.

This small, glossy, saddle-stitched book was issued by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria to accompany a show of works by British Columbian Barbara Sungur in Spring 1985. Ten of the works are reproduced here. Most of them are from two series — the Precarious Balances Series (mostly drawings) and a print series of the same name.

Patricia Bovey, Director of the Gallery, provides in the Foreword a brief historical context for the work. Curator Nicholas Tuele offers an extended description and analysis of the prints and drawings. In Appendix A, Sungur traces the evolution of her methods. Finally we get a biography of the artist, listing teaching positions, exhibitions, and collections.

Sungur explains that the work is produced through a process of overlaying in which slides of “facets of the environment” are included. Sea- and cloud-scapes figure prominently, giving the works an outdoor feel while superimposed geometric shapes provide an abstract, interior dimension. The result, with the soft blues and greens of the colour plates, is reminiscent of museum dioramas, in which the use of three-dimensional space is mixed with the function of two-dimensional depiction.

Every space is filled. It seems to be always raining. The curved forms of nature compete with potential or already-broken straight-line patterns, the failed or failing superimposition of human intent on the non-human. Here Sungur’s overlaying technique is an apt metaphor for her subject matter.

There is also a strong downward pull. Gravity acts in conventional ways, subverting human patterns and drawing them back into nature, sorting them centrifugally. This is powerful work, the battle between two species of form hanging in the balance, and this volume does an admirable job in providing a concise, densely packed introduction to it.