Featured Collections:
Yoonmi Nam & Andrew Jeffrey Wright: Opening Nov 1, 2024
Ulla-Stina Wikander: On View Nov 21, 2024, Reception Dec 6, 2024

Click each artist's name to view the collection
Yoonmi Nam • Andrew Jeffrey Wright • Ulla-Stina Wikander

Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to present three distinct collections championing craft and reinvention for CraftNOW 2024 throughout the month of November. Artists Yoonmi Nam, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, and Ulla-Stina Wikander have spent many years honing in on their respective crafts that incorporate the use and repetition of found materials. In a time where new objects are constantly produced with diminishing relevance and single-use purpose, we uplift unique methods of up-cycling in art that re-contextualizes material to expand on larger ideas of craftsmanship, methods of production, and the functionality of objects. Each artist creates artwork through layering of old and new construction, bringing new life to past pieces and not letting matter go to waste.

Artwork by Yoonmi Nam & Andrew Jeffrey Wright will be on view on the first floor of the Paradigm Arts Building (12 N 3rd St) starting Nov 1, 2024 through the end of the month, with a public opening reception on Friday, November 1st from 6:00-8:00 pm.

Artwork by Ulla-Stina Wikander will be on view on the first floor of the Paradigm Arts Building (12 N. 3rd St) starting November 21, 2024 with a public reception on Friday, December 6th from 6:00-8:00 pm.

Ulla-Stina Wikander
Communication

Explore the collection HERE

Reception: Friday, December 6, 2024

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM 

Ulla-Stina Wikander has spent many years accumulating vintage appliances and antique embroidery, attracted to the discarded and sacred aspects of crafted objects. While initially following the the urge of nostalgia, through her collecting Wikander began to see these works as explorations of feminism, domesticity, and up-cycling. In her newest collection of embroidery-covered sculptures, Communication, Wikander is reaching across time to connect and collaborate with the historically unnamed craftswomen that proliferated the iconic medium. Following the theme of communication, Wikander assembles a fleet of objects outlining the evolution of rotary and Ericsson phones. Whether it is the tabletop box with cradle, wall-mounted phone, or the stylish, lightweight Cobra receiver, each imagination of modern connection is now considered outdated and not functional. Wikander brings these vintage technologies together to blur the line between practicality and aesthetics. Accompanied with other objects used for relaying messages of affection (flowers), prose (typewriter), and music (headset), Wikander creates a vignette of artisanship and retro aesthetics to inspire new ideas around connection, kitsch, and craft.

Ulla-Stina Wikander was born in 1957 and raised in Gothenburg. She is currently living in Kullavik/Stockholm, Sweden and has been working as an artist since 1986. For over 15 years she has collected cross stitch embroidery, and today has a big collection with over 100 different designs. These embroideries have been made by women and are often seen as kitsch and regarded pretty worthless. Wikander has mixed feelings for them, sometimes they are very beautiful and she wants to bring them back to life. In 2012 she started to cover ordinary household items from the 70s, like a vacuum cleaner, sewing machine, electric mixer, etc. She finds it interesting to see how these objects transform in a new context; the obsolet, the things we do not want any longer, the old and forgotten things. They become artifacts from a bygone era, disguised, camouflaged and dressed. Wikander gives them a second life and although she cuts the embroideries into pieces, thinks of them as new, and dressed up. She visits flea markets and vintage stores to find cross stitch embroidery and the objects to work with.

Explore and Collect Artwork by Ulla-Stina Wikander HERE

Yoonmi Nam
Generally Meant to be Discarded
a solo exhibition

Explore the collection HERE

“Generally Meant to be Discarded" is an exhibition by Yoonmi Nam inspired by the presence of objects that we handle, consume, display and discard. The artist found herself collecting trash, especially with all of the disposables that the pandemic introduced into her life, and then used these objects––from plastic containers to flattened delivery boxes––to create each series within her solo exhibition. 

I observe the things around me. I am deeply aware of the presence of objects that we handle, consume, display, and discard. I am drawn to them especially when they subtly suggest a sense of time that seems both temporary and lasting. There is truth and honesty in time, as all of us share the fate of impermanence. But the way we surround ourselves with collections of things, it is as if we feel a sense of permanence through these comforts and arrangements. In my work, I make images and forms that highlight everyday objects, spaces, events, and routines, that while insignificant and mundane, allow us to notice both the stillness and the passage of time.

Like many people during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband and I stayed in our small house and relied on deliveries to sustain us. Every week, delivery boxes and plastic containers of varying sizes and shapes from local restaurants, shops, and online stores were left at our front door. I developed a routine of disinfecting them and then breaking down the boxes and other packaging materials to recycle them. It became a consuming part of my daily activity because if neglected, the boxes and plastic containers would start to take over the small space that we lived in. In the process of handling these objects for recycling, I noticed interesting shapes and began to collect them.

I am a collector of trash. My collection of flattened-out boxes became templates that I used to trace their outline shapes onto Tyvek sheets. The Tyvek sheet surfaces were first painted with Sumi ink and sprayed with the alcohol-based sanitizers that I had used to disinfect the surfaces of our deliveries. When mists of this spray land on the Sumi ink surfaces, it reacts with the still wet ink and makes visible the trace of my disinfecting action. Using my various box templates, I traced their shapes and made the necessary cuts and folds to imitate the original boxes. Using these ink and alcohol-stained cut-out shapes, I made studies of different arrangements and conditions. This body of work is collectively titled Delivered and Discarded. At times the box shape remains tethered to the rest of the Tyvek sheet, and at other times, different shapes of flatted-out boxes are stacked in a small pile, as if they were to be taken out to be discarded.

The plastic containers are designed to be useful for very specific and brief tasks. They were designed to keep fragile or temporary items protected, such as eggs, COVID tests, take-out food, and Girl Scout cookies. I am interested in these objects as cultural artifacts of our present time. I am also interested in the contradicting sense of time that these objects inherently possess as materials and in their functions. Keeping is a collection of ceramic objects that are direct castings of the negative spaces of various plastic packages, and they become indexical signs of these disposable objects. Another series titled Cairn are porcelain takeout containers stacked neatly and placed on tables that are inspired by Soban, a traditional Korean dining table. These cast porcelain pieces are glazed with traditional Korean celadon glaze to further the conversation with history, culture, time, and identity.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 
Nam, born in Seoul, South Korea, is a professor of printmaking at the University of Kansas. Her work has appeared in national and international exhibitions, including 2023’s “Found in Translation: Explorations by 8 Contemporary Artists” at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and on the Block Artspace Project Wall in 2022-23.

Yoonmi Nam is an artist born in Seoul, South Korea, and has studied in Korea, Canada, US, and Japan. Yoonmi is interested in the observation and depiction of everyday objects and occurrences, especially when they subtly suggest contradictions - a perception of time that feels both temporary and lasting and a sense of place that feels both familiar and foreign. Growing up as an only child with working parents, she often engaged in quiet observations of things around her. Experiences of living in disparate cultures with different people and their histories allowed her to notice what often is unobserved in one’s own familiar spaces. She works in traditional printmaking processes such as mokuhanga (Japanese-style water-based woodblock printing) and lithography to make imagery as well as explore other materials such as clay, glass, and paper to make three-dimensional still lifes.

Yoonmi received her MFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA degree from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. She was awarded residencies at Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Japan three times (2004, 2012, 2019) to study traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques and is the recipient of the Keiko Kadota Award for Advancement of Mokuhanga. She has participated in artist residencies at Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, Kala Art Institute in California, Vermont Studio Center, and a 3-year studio residency at Studios Inc. in Kansas City. Her work is in the collections of the RISD Museum, RI; Spencer Museum of Art, KS; and the Hawai’i State Art Museum, HI; among others, and has shown her work in over 25 solo exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Yoonmi is a professor of printmaking at the University of Kansas.

Explore and Collect Artwork by Yoonmi Nam HERE

Andrew Jeffrey Wright
Super Rare Series
Explore the collection HERE

Opening November 1st

Andrew Jeffrey Wright (Philadelphia, PA) is a multi-disciplinary artist well known for his optically charged screenprints of obsessively repeated abstract patterns and one or two color screenprints that incorporate hilarious social commentary drawn in an economic and knowingly naïve style. This collection features the artist’s popular and ongoing “Super Rare” screen print series. A “super rare” screen print is a one-of-a-kind print created through a layering process that sometimes takes the artist years to create!

Wright is a current and founding member of Space 1026. He has BFA in Animation from The University Of The Arts. His works include murals, screen printing, painting, animation, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, video, installation and performance. He has had solo exhibitions at The Hole (NYC), THIS Gallery (LA), Lamp Harajuku (Tokyo), The Luggage Store (San Francisco), The Print Center (Philadelphia) and Giant Robot NY (NYC). He has been in group exhibitions at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia), ICA (Philadelphia), The Corcoran (DC) and Foundation Cartier (Paris). Wright's art has been featured in books published by Chronicle, Gingko, Picturebox Inc., Abrams Image and Buenaventura Press. Residencies include The Clocktower Gallery (NYC), The Philadelphia Free Library and The Silent Barn (Brooklyn)

Explore and Collect Artwork by Andrew Jeffrey Wright HERE

Yoonmi Nam & Andrew Jeffrey Wright Reception
Friday, November 1, 2024
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM 

Ulla-Stina Wikander Reception
Friday, December 6, 2024
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM 

EXHIBITION HOURS
Thursdays • 10 AM – 6 PM
Fridays • 10 AM – 6 PM
Saturdays • 11 AM – 6 PM
Sundays • 11 AM – 5 PM
And by appointment outside of hours.

MEDIA CONTACT
For all inquiries contact info@paradigm-gallery.com

André Schulze's Pixelated Series

 
To accompany this selection of works incorporating up-cycling, we are also hosting the newest release from Dresden-based artist, André Schulze, on display for a limited time as part of our special cash-and-carry releases this month. 

Learn more about our offerings from Kyle Montgomery, Nazeer Sabree, and André Schulze.

About Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Paradigm Gallery + Studio® was established in 2010 by co-founders and curators, Jason Chen and Sara McCorriston. The gallery exhibits meaningful, process-intense contemporary artwork by emerging and mid-career artists from around the world, with a focus on Philadelphia. In 2023, Paradigm moved locations and opened its new 5-story, 7,000 sq. ft. home, The Paradigm Arts Building, in Old City, Philadelphia. Open to the public, the building boasts multiple floors of exhibition space, integrated in-house design and printmaking, a dedicated events floor, and art advisory offices. With this, Chen and McCorriston expanded their vision for the greater Philadelphia arts community. The gallery is at the heart of this vision, anchoring Paradigm’s overall mission of increasing access to the commercial art world, supporting artists and advancing their careers, and collaborating with like-minded partners to build a more equitable, sustainable arts economy for all.

LOCATION
12 N. 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

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