Artworks

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MATTIUSI IYAITUK (1950-) IVUJIVIK, I Got My First Fish, 2006

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MATTIUSI IYAITUK (1950-) IVUJIVIK

I Got My First Fish, 2006

antler, waxed string, and stone, 21 x 12 x 7.25 in (53.3 x 30.5 x 18.4 cm)
titled, dated, and signed, "I got my / first fish / ᒪᑦᑎᐅᓯ 06".

LOT 95
ESTIMATE: $3,500 — $5,000
PRICE REALIZED: $3,600.00

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When you look at my sculpture, you don’t understand all of it. For this reason, you have the freedom to dream. Everyone has opinions about art so I just put...

When you look at my sculpture, you don’t understand all of it. For this reason, you have the freedom to dream. Everyone has opinions about art so I just put titles for each piece and leave the rest for dreams.

Thus begins the artist’s statement in the 2000 Spirit Wrestler Gallery exhibition catalogue The Freedom to Dream: The Sculpture of Mattiusi Iyaituk. Nigel Reading continues the thought in his introduction, “The explanation of the sculpture is not always evident upon initial viewing but always seems to make sense upon revelation of the title.”

Mattiusi Iyaituk calls himself an abstract artist. His sculptures are not abstract in the way that the minimalist works of John Pangnark are, but they certainly stray away from realism and towards a dreamy, conceptual kind of abstraction. I Got My First Fish is a poetic fond remembrance of youth. Its gently swaying forms put us in mind of Kenojuak’s Rabbit Eating Seaweed (Lot 36); the “soft kakivak” reminds us of Salvador Dali’s watches. Lovely.

References: For numerous works incorporating caribou antler see the solo exhibition catalogue The Freedom to Dream: The Sculpture of Mattiusi Iyaituk, (Vancouver: Spirit Wrestler Gallery, 2000). For other works incorporating antler see the catalogue Ullumimut: Between tradition and innovation, (Montreal: Visual Art Centre, McClure Gallery/Avataq Cultural Institute), 2015.

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Provenance

An Ottawa Collection.

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