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When The Art Newspaper reported on June 12 that Miami collectors Don and Mera Rubell were in the lead to buy David Altmejd's The Index - the star attraction of the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this summer - it appears it jumped the gun. In fact, in the Biennale's opening moments, the complex sculptural work had already been placed on hold by Art Gallery of Ontario curator David Moos.

It's the opposite of the usual Canadian story. All too often in Canada, we have seen works by our international art stars - Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham and others - snapped up on the international market, with Canadian institutions too slow off the mark to acquire works before the prices go through the roof.

This time, though, it's a different scenario. With the support of two Toronto collectors - investment banker George Hartman and his wife Arlene Goldman, a Legal Aid Ontario researcher - the AGO has bagged the work, allegedly beating out heavyweight contenders such as the Rubells and fellow Miami collector Rosa de la Cruz.

The Toronto couple bought the work on the AGO's behalf, and plans are in place for it to be the centrepiece of the new contemporary art galleries when the museum reopens after its Gehry redesign next summer. Market insiders estimate the price tag to be in the neighbourhood of $300,000 (U.S.).

The Index is a remarkably summative work, drawing together many of the threads of Altmejd's production over the past seven years. (The artist, Montreal born and raised, is only 33 years old.) Moos describes the piece as a "magical, mystical, transformative thing," and "the most ambitious declaration of his artistic vision so far."

A labyrinthine construction of steel struts linked by mirrored and plain glass panels, it supports a menagerie of squirrels and birds (Altmejd has concocted an aviary of fantastical feathered fauna, including owls with vulvas blossoming from within their breast feathers), male fashion mannequins with bird heads, a sampling of black leather S&M regalia, handmade silicone sex toys and a rich variety of vegetation - evergreen trees, moss, toadstools and blossoming flowers sprouting jagged crystal forms. Here and there, he has also included fragments of what seem to be decomposing, crystal-encrusted werewolf limbs and heads, a reprise of the startling iconography that initially garnered acclaim for Altmejd when he burst onto the New York scene in 2004.

The work, says Moos, "is about the transformation of death into rebirth. It allows the viewer to experience that, and to explore it."

The Index is also, he says, a consummate example of the artistic form that has defined the last decade in art: installation sculpture. "You have international artists like Ann Hamilton, Robert Gober and Kiki Smith" he says, citing artists now in solid mid-career, "but then there is the younger generation like Sarah Sze and [the late] Jason Rhoades." Altmejd, he says, is a master of the medium, able to create a totality in which every detail contributes in a way that is clearly consistent thematically.

Donors Hartman and Goldman have never seen The Index, though they own an earlier small work by Altmejd, which they bought at the Frieze art fair in London last October. "We get a kick out of supporting young Canadian artists, and many of the artists we have bought are Canadians who most people don't know are Canadians," says Hartman, "people like Angela Bulloch, Karel Funk, Tim Gardner, Marcel Dzama and Sarah Anne Johnson." Most of them, like Altmejd, live outside of Canada.

"Now we are on a campaign to get them the recognition we think they deserve."

For Altmedj, who splits his time between New York and London, it's a particularly satisfying outcome. The Index is the first of his works to be bought by a Canadian museum. "This is the best outcome for the piece," he said this week in a phone interview. "It just makes so much sense. I made the piece for Canada, to represent Canada in an international context."

So, wherein resides the work's essential Canadianness? "I don't want to be too literal," Altmejd says, "but I think its multimedia experimental aspect is Canadian, and then there is the interest in the weird." Filmmaker David Cronenberg, he says, remains a huge influence on his work.

"But really, it's mostly about the relationship to nature. Everything in this work is northern" - its woodland birds, beasts and coniferous flourishes set amid airy, crystalline spaces suffused with reflected light. "In my mind, this is taking place somewhere that is not so hot. I was feeling that when I was making it - a kind of freshness."

Part of that effect comes from the mirrored, skylit enclosure in which the work is being shown in Venice, where it remains on show until the end of November before being crated and shipped to the AGO. In Toronto, the artist will be at liberty to install it anew in the gallery's spaces, essentially remaking the work for the new context.

"I didn't expect that from a museum," Altmejd says. "Usually when people buy something, they don't want to change a hair. It's great that they are so open. They understand that the piece is alive, and that it can reshape itself."