Blog post by Ebony Dallas

 

I enjoyed the Ihzar Patkin’s pleated tulle installations. Since 1999, Patkin began his Wandering Veil Studies with poet, Agha Shahid Ali. The works further advocate the meanings of the selected poems. Of his works, I thought The Dead Are Here was the most intriguing. This wall sized pleated illusion was created in 2009 and was inspired from Ali’s 13th chapter of his From Another Desert elegy.

The subtle layering of the tulle sheets gives off the sense of illusion, rhythm, movement, and memory. With the similar effect of Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending Staircase, and Georges Seurat’s Pointillism landscape paintings, his work contains the push and pull factors that answer their own questions. What is being seen? Why are they relevant? Within his pieces each mark seems arbitrary until viewed as a whole. The enclosed installation display allowed the illusion of being apart of the work; at each glance images are hidden and revealed.

This tulle piece was balanced against a white constructed background, hinting the delicacy of luminosity with similarities to the 19th century Impressionism. With The Dead Are Here, I was reminded of Claude Monet, specifically for its formal qualities. Like Monet, Patkin’s pieces are massive in size with unmixed strokes of vibrant hues that are overlaid and designed to express subjective impressions as opposed to objective reality. I found it interesting that Patkin’s installations were subjective impressions of Ali’s subjective poems.

MASS MoCA, on view through September 1, 2014

 

“The Dead Are Here, 2009.” Veiled Threats 1999-current with the poems of Agha Shahid Ali Web. <http://www.izharpatkin.com/veiled_threats/veiled_threats.html>.

 

MoCA, MASS. “Izhar Patkin: The Wandering Veil.” Calendar

Web. <http://www.massmoca.org/zzevent_details.php?id=845>.

 

Patkin’s website: http://www.izharpatkin.com