Precarious Balances Prints

Emerging from the same visual research as the drawing series of the same title, prints from the Precarious Balances series probed the construction of Nature and Culture as distinct, dichotomous spheres; seeking to emphasize the vital importance of understanding the complex and subtle interrelationships of social/political and natural phenomena.

“Barbara [Zeigler] Sungur’s prints of the last decade display a unique vocabulary of images. It exploits the conventions of traditional printmaking in order to propose a critique of human ambition and delusion. She uses photographic sources, but she does not use them, like many contemporary artists, in the form of appropriated images as references to the ethos of popular culture projected by advertising, film, and journalism. Instead, she creates prints with images drawn after her own photographs or, more recently, by incorporating these directly by photo-etching and photo-lithography. Here subjects are often fantastical landscapes. By combining the pictorial veracity of photography with carefully rendered imaginative elements, Sungur has produced images which effectively convey her quietly cynical views...”

Jane Young. Barbara Z. Sungur’s Precarious Balance. Precarious Balance: Print Voice II. Ed Walter Jule. Edmonton, University of Alberta, 1989: 1.