When Ranbir Sidhu was a child, his father put an architect’s drawing board in his bedroom. It was a gesture that would echo in the sculptures, jewelry and furniture Sidhu made decades later — work marked by an architectural instinct for structure.
Sidhu, who was born in the U.K. and raised in Scarborough, came to prominence after designing pieces for Drake and The Weeknd, among others.
Stainless steel and marble are his primary materials. In his hands, they become Janus-like. They look back to the traditions of his Sikh heritage while imagining a future shaped by space travel.
Sidhu’s first museum show, “No Limits,” opens at the AGO on Thursday. It brings together many of his thematic interests and his command of steel and marble.
The centrepiece is “Asteroid 3033 X1,” a monumental crystalline sculpture that looks as if a meteor struck the ROM’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal and fused with it.
Five hundred metal sheets clad its surface. Sidhu has etched them with patterns drawn from the Widmanstätten lines, which are found in iron meteorites.
As the viewer moves around the piece, niches reveal light cast from within the sculpture. They are reflected to resemble faint stars scattered across a galaxy. Sidhu’s asteroid is of the universe, but it also contains the universe within it.
The show also includes “Fortress of Memory,” which features 21 steel sculptures resting on marble bases. Sidhu conceived them as a memorial to the 21 Sikh soldiers who made a last stand in the 1897 Battle of Saragarhi in what is now Pakistan.
Dimly lit, the grey forms take on a steely solemnity. Standing together, though, they suggest a quiet faith in the collective.
Sidhu said his process begins with “an idea that feels just beyond reach, something that should not exist yet. I like starting from that place of difficulty and then working backwards to make it real.” He calls this building from a “future past.”
The next steps, he said, are physical: “I sketch until the form settles, then my team and I move into three-dimensional modelling, proportion studies and engineering.
“These sculptures are large enough to behave like architecture, so everything — from metalwork and structural support to lighting and finish — has to be carefully resolved.”
“Odyssey,” another work in the show, dramatizes this play of structure and light. Dozens of gold and steel spires refract and reflect illumination. Here, Sidhu engages with what he calls “sacred architecture,” which has long used reflection to tether the human to the divine.
Walking through the exhibition, Sidhu noted that alongside its blend of past and future, the show also draws together distinct geographies and cultures.
Chief among these is Sikh visual culture, which he says “asks how form, light and space can express equality, presence and the sacred.” He points to the polished steel surfaces of his sculptures.
“They reflect the viewer, but never alone. When someone stands in front of the work, they see themselves along with the space around them and the people beside them. The encounter becomes communal rather than individual.”
Julian Cox, the AGO’s chief curator, told me the seed for the show began in a conversation he had with Sidhu in 2023. Momentum gathered when he saw a prototype of “Asteroid” last year.
“I was floored,” he said. “From that point on the question for me and the team was, ‘How do we make this happen?’”
“No Limits” may be the work of a local artist, Cox said, but Sidhu’s “practice is global in ambition and reach,” pointing to his collaborations with craftsmen and fabricators around the world.
Cox’s hope is that audiences will be “enthralled by Sidhu’s unique vision, one that fuses inspiration from his Sikh heritage with a boundless appetite to explore the possibilities of sculpture in metal.”
One of those possibilities is scale: how big, or how small, a sculpture can be. But for Sidhu, something is not monumental simply because of its size.
“Scale is presence, spirit and expansiveness,” he said. “It’s something that holds space and invites you to pause and reflect. I try to bring that into my sculptures, so the scale isn’t just impressive but a way to create stillness, power and a sense of timelessness.” That is what Sidhu hopes viewers take away.
“No Limits,” he said, “was about offering the public a moment to pause, reflect and possibly see something familiar in a new way.”
Ranbir Sidhu’s “No Limits” is at the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W., until Jan. 3. See ago.ca for information.
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