Untitled

Nagji Patel challenged the viewer’s ability to accurately interpret his sculptures with several possibilities or outcomes, none of which was right or wrong. Having transitioned from playing with clay at home to studying sculpture at art school—he studied at M. S. University, Baroda—he liked to extend his, and the viewer’s, ability to see different things simultaneously, even contrarily. This became a constant factor in Patel’s work, whatever its medium or scale, and this bronze sculpture of an abstract head, which could be of a woman or an animal, is an example of that.