NEW YORK, NY.- Paddle8 announces a new artist-in-residence program based in its New York City headquarters, Paddle8 Salon. Each year, Paddle8 will commission artists to take over their space to install site-specific murals and open-ended activations. The inaugural commission includes murals, sculptures and a ceramic installation by Spanish artist Nuria Mora, and an immersive lower level universe by street artists Yok & Sheryo that includes murals, installations of sculpture as well as a full build out event space which mimics a tattoo parlor. The Paddle8 Salon commissions will debut during a three-hour activation on August 27 featuring performances by dance collective Hivewild and artist Leeroy New.
“Founded as an online auction house, Paddle8 has been largely a secondary marketplace,” said Paddle8 CEO Izabela Depczyk. “With the debut of Paddle8 Salon, we are thrilled to be commissioning and working with artists directly, promoting and exhibiting their work and expanding their sales through our recently launched e-commerce feature, the digital storefront. Furthermore, these immersive artworks are the perfect inspiring backdrop for the Paddle8 workforce.”
Commissioned artists will also have the opportunity to have their own digital storefront on Paddle8 where further immersive details on the installation can be found and works from the installation will be available to collectors worldwide in 2020. The Paddle8 Salon digital storefront will power the offline exhibition with an online showroom and retail platform. Each storefront will be a dedicated page that offers dynamic storytelling and visitor engagement on the artists along with buy-now sales.
THE COMMISSIONS
On the main floor of Paddle8’s office, Nuria Mora has installed three unique universes comprised of murals, ceramics, large-scale works on paper, and custom rugs in collaboration with DAC Rugs. She explores themes of memory, texture and pattern executed in vivid colors. In one section, Mora imagines a secret garden hidden behind a wall, rendered in 3-D, inviting viewers to surmise another unseen universe.
On the office’s lower level, artists Yok & Sheryo have created a three-part installation: the main seating area entitled “A Frugal Existence” is made up of different ecosystems featuring stencil murals, sculptures, small-scale paintings and custom rugs which reflect the duo's interests in the human psyche and frustrations towards contemporary lifestyles and its mercurial nature; Consumerism, Racism, Sexism, Worshipping false idols, Fake news, and Vanity. The artists have also designed a tattoo den called "Stab you good", Yok & Sheryo's tribute to the Bowery and the Lower East Side’s history of tattoo culture. The immersive space features flickering neon red lighting sets the mood and the low-key entrance to the bigger installation and might or might not serve as a secret tattoo party location for Yok & Sheryo's tattoos on certain nights. Finally, the “loosey goosey” bathroom design is an homage to the LES’s early music scene. Yok & Sheryo have installed black and white works on paper featuring the duo’s signature characters, which have been applied to reference early punk and hip-hop clubs whose bathrooms were regularly plastered with posters and flyers.
THE ARTISTS
Nuria Mora is a Madrid-based street artist who works across mediums including painting, mural, ceramics and site-specific multi-media installation. Nuria is fascinated by the relationship and dialogue she creates through her public work. Through a spontaneous, respectful practice, considering the space, place and the neighborhood itself, Nuria aims to create spaces of contemplation that transport viewers for seconds or even hours employing a visual language that is infinite and abstract and thus universal. Mora’s work expands beyond street art and also exhibits in galleries and institutions. Rather than replicate her spontaneous public work, her inside installations employ video, murals, watercolor, to create an immersive environment that aims to transport viewers into her visual universe.
Yok & Sheryo are an artistic duo from Australia and Singapore. Originating as street artists, Yok & Sheryo’s work has shifted to sculpture, ceramics, moving images and large-scale installations of an immersive and site-specific nature that work to engage audiences. They spent their formative years split between New York and South East Asia working as a duo, being inspired by South East Asian culture, music, surfing and skateboarding, and developing their distinctive artistic style. They have had two exhibitions at Krause Gallery in New York City and their work has been exhibited worldwide.
Sheryo is a Singaporean visual and mural artist who started painting in the streets in 2005. Her art seeks to investigate, analyze and document the human psyche and frustrations towards contemporary lifestyles and its mercurial nature. She works across mediums, from 2D paintings to 3D sculptures, installations and moving images. Her work, often referencing pulp illustrations, skateboard graphics and her unabashed affinity for kitsch, translate across as jovial, surreal imagery that speak to those who grew up admiring ’80s and ’90s skateboarding and surfing culture. Her work appeared in Jeffrey Deitch’s 2013 “Women on the Walls” and 2015 “Coney Island Art Walls.”
The Yok is an Australian born artist who grew up fueled by Ren and Stimpy cartoons and skateboarding graphics, which had a heavy influence on his artistic voice. While a student at Curtin University from 1997 - 1999, Yok continued to travel and create artwork which led him to exhibit work in Melbourne, Sydney, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, New York, Tokyo and London. The Yok has been invited to many street art festivals around the world, most notable Miami Art Basel 2014 and 2015.
