Turkish/American artis Levent Tuncer's paintings deal with ideas of repetition, with order and disorder, history and fiction, change, and a primal awareness of the duality that is inherent in all cultures. The work establishes a dialogue about these dualities using designs derived from architecture, textiles and tilings as cross-cultural emblems of Tuncer's themes.
In the History/Fiction series, for example, the artist has for some years been working with a single sixteenth century Iznik tile pattern. By repeating the design, allowing it to echo itself and mutate, and by superimposing various geometric systems on it, he creates a complex visual equivalent of the dynamics of cultural disjuncture. Just as memory alters the perception of time, by overlaying these patterns, Tuncer subverts their repetitive rigidity. In painterly language, using tactile qualities and color, he suggests that order, like authority, is vital only when it evolves, and that it evolves only when challenged and made to diverge from its historical context.
Tuncer's work stays true to art of painting; both in its making and in the way it is revealed to the viewer. With time and the movement of light, the paintings slowly unfold, their three-dimensional ridges spreading a pattern of changing shadows, alerting us subtly to the shifting context of our thoughts.
