Pangnark

From the time that he began making stone carvings in the mid-1960s until his death in 1980, the Inuit sculptor John
Pangnark created a unique and compelling body of work. Using the human form as a starting point, Pangnark produced minimalist sculptural works that are remarkable for their understatement and modest scale.

This exhibition – the first in over two decades to focus on this important Canadian artist – brings together a dozen exemplary stone works from the 1960s and 1970s. Though not a full representatiion of Pangnark’s sculptural output, the exhibition succeeds in showing the range of his expression and continuously evolving style.

Although he was not the only Inuit artist of his generation to work in a non-representational style, Pangnark was in many ways the most original. With their sloping surfaces and contoured volumes, his abstracted works are as much about mass, line and material as they are about subject matter.

At once dramatic and enigmatical, the works in Pangnark are a testament to the singular vision and spirit of one of Canada’s most significant artists.