Balance 1969

Curator: Looking at this sketch by Vasile Kazar from 1969, titled "Balance," my initial impression is of fragility. There’s a dreamlike quality, as if caught between waking and sleep. Editor: Dreamlike is right. It’s the delicate pencil work, isn’t it? See how Kazar leaves so much open, almost incomplete. The sketchbook style gives it a very intimate feel. What draws you to it as an iconographer? Curator: Well, despite the incomplete quality, I see powerful archetypes at play. The figure seems burdened, almost a Atlas figure perhaps, but precariously balancing elements: what looks like a boat, a strange, geometric landscape. Balance is about finding equilibrium amidst chaos, isn’t it? Even when the rules that govern us and the world make little sense? Editor: I agree. What strikes me about the piece is less the dreamscape itself, but Kazar's process. A light pencil sketch speaks to the state of creativity in Romania during the late 60's. Artists used private sketches and small, impermanent works, to test new forms of representation at a time where they were encouraged to continue the socialist realist. Curator: That's interesting—I also find myself wondering about the pier in the background and the symbolism associated with the water below. Those lines that separate us from the subconscious. Is it a gateway or a barrier? Is there an implication there of the constant give and take? Editor: And there is a very personal vulnerability implied, isn't it, since sketches in general rarely achieve a public stage, but that might have been the point after all. And you wonder too how political events of the day seeped in his mind. Curator: Absolutely. It all invites us to consider what weights we carry, how we distribute them, and where we find our own precarious equilibrium. Thanks, I can now look at this and have a broader idea and feel toward it. Editor: Same here.