Exposed Spines

The first work, ‘Bursting Pillar’, manifests as a fragment of infrastructure frozen in a loop of collapse, its surface evoking rust, heat, and erosion.

The third component of this trajectory is a sweeping, five-panel singular artwork titled Continuous Horizons. Executed through hand-knotting, zari embroidery, and traditional weaving techniques, this panoramic composition is conceived as a single, unbroken horizon line, as a direct evolution of both his early drawings and his paper-cut reliefs. As part of his practice, Patel always moves beyond traditional, flat textile conventions by introducing varying, exaggerated pile heights. This variable depth allows the drawing to physically leap off its two-dimensional support system, generating a raw, tactile language of three-dimensional presence that occupies the gallery space through pure material protrusion.

The third movement in this series manifests as a monumental diptych, also rising to a uniform height of ten feet. Executed through a rigorous hand-knotted stitching method, this work deliberately synthesises flat dhurrie knotting techniques with long, untufted fringes that hang suspended, weeping from the textile’s lower edges. This composition is born from a fascination with how physical dripping introduces an orderly distortion into the pristine resolution of a digital image. Here, Patel uses the rhythmic, repetitive labour of the weave to map an intentional ‘leak’ within the process of technological transduction. The pattern replicates itself precisely until it encounters the loose, falling fringe, where the line slips away from the CAD program's digital grid and yields entirely to gravity to create a space where distortion itself becomes an organised, structural phenomenon.

Tufted Grid - The second work, ‘Tufted Grid’, softens the precision of digital drawing into tactile surfaces that appear as growing organic structures.

The final body of work in this series consists of an intimate collection of small-scale hand-knotted compositions titled Material Scribbles. These works represent his most radical departure from traditional, structured methodologies of weaving. While his larger works rely on a rigid digital blueprint, these smaller iterations function as spaces where the structural grid of CAD design is consciously dissolved. Patel subverts the rigidity of the loom by introducing a chaotic, highly intuitive lexicon of material scribbles. By mixing contrasting wool counts, varying pile heights, raw metallic threads, and synthetic fibers directly into the hand-knotting process, the works abandon any pre-determined or fixed industrial imagery.

The second work, ‘Augmented Monolith’, interrogates systems of mapping and control through a triangulated structure that shifts with the viewer's movement in the exhibition space.

The final work in the series, ‘Endless Entanglement’, synchronizes with industrial patterns while transforming them into a soft yet imposing vertical presence, indexing the hidden repetitions that shape contemporary landscapes.

The first work, ‘Bursting Pillar’, manifests as a fragment of infrastructure frozen in a loop of collapse, its surface evoking rust, heat, and erosion.

The suspended installation ‘Stratified Ruins’, with its six textile layers, creates a shifting industrial landscape that alters as the viewer moves around the space.