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Artworks
TOONOO SHARKY (1970-) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
Bird Fish Transformation, c. 2005stone and antler, 12 x 21.5 x 11 in (30.5 x 54.6 x 27.9 cm)
signed, "ᑐᓄ ᓴᑭ".Further images
Toonoo Sharky was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts at just thirty-two, making him one of its youngest-ever members. By then, he had already been carving for over...Toonoo Sharky was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts at just thirty-two, making him one of its youngest-ever members. By then, he had already been carving for over twenty years and exhibiting professionally for nearly fifteen. For more than three decades, he has been a leading figure among Kinngait sculptors, known for his bold and inventive approach.
The present work first reads as a stylized bird, its form streamlined and abstracted, but with closer looking, one notices the powerful sweep of what appear to be aquatic pectoral fins. The work is not content to rest on intriguing anatomy alone, however. It is a study in balance and risk, a sculptural gesture that seems to lean into space with impossible poise. In doing so, it becomes something more than representation. It becomes performance.
References: For similar works by the artist see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cat. 71 (see text); Derek Norton and Nigel Reading, Cape Dorset Sculpture, (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntrye, 2005), p. 76. See the article on the artist by Jessica Tomic-Bagshaw, “Contemporary Artist: Toonoo Sharky” in Inuit Art Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall 2001, pp. 4-6. See also First Arts, Toronto, 5 December 2022, Lot 28.
Provenance
A Toronto Collection.
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