Gardens for the Global City
1991 - current
oil, screen, velvet
72" x 48" each painting

Collections; Guggenheim
museum and Whitney Museum, NY.


A series of 108 oil paintings with a rug-like surface, achieved by painting through aluminum wire mesh ‘canvas’ from back to front. The paintings combine narrative traditions of Asian carpets with modern painting narratives of form.
Host Culture 2001
oil, screen, velvet
72” x 48"

Collection;
Tel Aviv Museum

A group of paintings from the Gardens for the Global City series which tell the story of Jewish Persian rugs. (catalog)
you never bought me a rug izhar patkin
You Never Bought Me A Chinese Rug 1983
Oil on Screen 68” x 34”
collection: Estate of Holly Solomon

this is not a rug izhar patkin
This is Not a Rug, 1984
Oil on Screen 52" x 62"

private collection

The Swamp 1987
oil on screen,
various sizes

private collections

swamp izhar patkin

The Fall 2000
ink on pleated neoprene
Collection: Credit Swiss

the fall izhar patkin

A naked Eve (Christy Turlington) is preparing for her exile from the Garden of Eden. The best of today’s best fashion editors come to her rescue, offering their finest threads. Everything is prêt-à-porter in this fall landscape, including the uprooted trees and the sky.


Before the Law Stands a Doorkeeper 1985

This 1985 show explored the intimacy of narratives found in Americana.

It included a mural size painting on wood that combined the style
of Pennsylvania Dutch barn paintings with Kafka’s story, "Before the Law Stands a Doorkeeper."
The show also included paintings which utilized the folklore technique of “reverse painting”. However, this technique was reinvented by replacing the traditional glass canvas with a metal wire mesh canvas. The resulting effect challenged the conventional foreground/background order of painting on canvas.

before the law stands a doorkeeper izhar patkin
Before the Law Stands a Doorkeeper, 1984- 85
oil, chalk, barnwood, screen, glass, window track, nails, metal chain, hinges
approx. 133” x 176”
Collection of the artist

Two Artists Sitting Under a Tree, a conversation
Izhar Patkin chez Neil Jenney’s lumberyard, Artforum, 1992

I am not a writer. I am a painter. I can call a painting a “painting,” but I don’t really know about “literature” by artists. On the other hand, this magazine is called Artforum, so I’m in the forum, and I’ve got my toga on, and I’m ready to roll . . . Since an artist’s work and the ideas behind it usually come to the public via labels that do not speak the language of the creative process, perhaps an artist c an be the best conduit for another artist’s ideas. This new series of visits between artists could give voice to ideas without becoming enslaved by formal, academic, or journalistic shopping lists. These are not the terms in which artists work, live, think, or talk to each other, and many times that’s how the story is missed. We work and talk in “real” terms: somewhere between “Where do you get that great ga-ga-gooey oil stick” and the desire to defy labels and to get on with the work. Full Text

maids of honor izhar patkin
The Maids of Honor, 1988
ink on pleated neoprene
123" x 197"
private collection

Holly’s Dining 1987
  Five-Piece Suit 1987
A three-piece suit may limit your freedom of movement, but a five-piece suit will unleash your imagination!
This 1987 show was a topsy-turvy melange of multiple disparate narratives, techniques, and mediums brought together by visual and verbal puns, political innuendos, and metaphors.



five piece suit installation

five piece suit izhar patkin

tatting izhar patkin

cocks and pansies izhar patkin
back to catalog page 3