The New Members show at the Sculptors Society of Canada presents a compelling cross-section of contemporary sculpture, featuring the diverse talents of Ruben Anton Komangapik, Viktor Mitic, Doğan Özdemir and Youren Yan. Far from a mere introduction, the exhibition asserts each artist’s place within a larger, evolving conversation about materiality, identity, and the cultural responsibilities of sculpture. What unites these otherwise disparate practices is a shared insistence on sculpture as a medium of confrontation and communion where the personal becomes political, and the tactile becomes transformative.
Ruben Anton Komangapik’s Tupilak is a diminutive, yet deeply resonant sculpture fashioned from ivory, gold, and glass beads. It stands as a convergence of ancestral legacy and contemporary reflection. Barely larger than the palm of a hand, this miniature figure defies its scale through the intensity of its symbolic charge and the precision of its execution. Komangapik, a sculptor of Inuit descent, draws from the rich tradition of tupilait: spirit figures historically carved by shamans to embody protective or retaliatory forces, often animated through ritual to confront enemies or ill-intentioned spirits. What immediately captivates is the figure’s outstretched hand, delicately holding a tiny mirror. In this gesture, the tupilak becomes less an emissary of vengeance. The mirror, encased in gold, reframes the traditional narrative: instead of reflecting outward aggression, it invites self-examination, perhaps even collective accountability.
Ruben Anton Komangapik, Tupilak, ivory, gold, glass bead (two views)
Viktor Mitic’s Hydra, a towering sculpture forged in 24k gold-plated stainless steel, is radiant, aggressive, and utterly magnetic. Standing taller than the viewer, the work commands not just space but attention, luring with its gilded surface while evoking a far more turbulent undercurrent. There is an unsettling beauty to Hydra, in part due to its material contradiction: gold, so often associated with opulence, purity, and divine authority, is here weaponized into a form that resists stability. The polished surface reflects not only the surrounding space but also the viewer, implicating us in the work’s disquiet. Lastly, it’s impossible not to feel small in its presence. There’s a visceral shiver in recognizing your own image fractured across something so cold and mythic. Hydra doesn’t just mirror the viewer; it exposes us.
Viktor Mitic, Hydra, 24k gold-plated stainless steel (left) and detail (right)
Youren Yan’s Christopher Columbus, cast in bronze, is a searing exploration into the legacy of monumentality and historical myth. Far from a conventional commemorative sculpture, Yan’s treatment of the infamous explorer is unflinching in its ambiguity, straddling the line between critique and spectacle. The use of bronze which is historically the medium of heroes, conquerors, and nation-builders immediately signals a dialogue with power. But in Yan’s hands, this material weight becomes ironic, even accusatory, as the figure of Columbus is rendered not triumphant, but spectral. There is no theatrical gesture, no melodramatic symbolism, just the heavy, immutable presence of bronze, imbued with the weight of centuries. That restraint is what makes the piece so potent. It draws the viewer into a confrontation with history: one that does not offer resolution, only the demand to look longer and deeper.
Youren Yan, Christopher Columbus, bronze (left) and detail (right)
Doğan Özdemir’s Black Panther, rendered in raw steel, is a sculpture that feels both unfinished and impossibly alive. At first glance, it appears incomplete: exposed welds, jagged edges, and a skeletal structure that defies the polished expectations of monumental animal forms. But it is precisely this incompleteness that animates the work, giving it a sense of motion and urgency rarely achieved in metal. The panther does not sit still for admiration; it lunges visually out of its own form. Materiality is crucial here. Steel, industrial and unforgiving, is shaped not into smooth anatomical realism but into suggestion. There is no decorative surface to distract the eye, only raw structure. Özdemir achieves something rare: a sculpture that breathes through its absences and that threatens to break free from its own medium.
Doğan Özdemir, Black Panther, Circle of Life, steel (two views)
In New Members, the Sculptors Society of Canada invites us into a dialogue where sculpture transcends its physicality, emerging as a medium that speaks to both personal identity and collective history. The artists challenge the viewer not only to appreciate form but to reckon with the tensions it holds, whether between past and present, beauty and violence, or material and meaning.
Text and photo: Kaya Meziane
*Exhibition information: New Members / Ruben Anton Komangapik, Viktor Mitic, Doğan Özdemir and Youren Yan, March 29 – May 9, 2025, Canadian Sculpture Centre, 95 Moatfield Drive, 5th Floor, North York. Gallery hours: Tue – Fri, 12 – 5 pm.