Direction / Instruction at Paradigm Gallery, Philadelphia

Direction / Instruction is a touring group exhibition with an unusually strong line-up. It had already stopped at Svper Ordinary in Denver and at CAVE Gallery in Venice Beach, California, before arriving at Paradigm Gallery + Studio in Philadelphia, where it opened on 26 August 2016 and runs until 17 September.

Street artists, not street art

What connects the artists is loose but real. Each looks at contemporary city life through materials and methods outside the usual kit, and the show is dominated by colour, composition, pattern and geometric form. Nearly all of them work on the street as well, yet very little here carries the familiar marks of what people mean by street art. Abstraction outweighs figuration by a long way. Paradigm’s own announcement pointed towards Ellsworth Kelly and Sol LeWitt, and the comparison holds up in the room.

The curator is Hyland Mather, who runs Andenken Gallery in Amsterdam and also shows his own work in the exhibition under the name thelostobject.

Materials

The range of materials is the pleasure of the show. Evan Hecox paints over grounds collaged from old printed paper, and the paintings are among the best things on the walls. Anna Taratiel, who works as OVNI, builds whole compositions out of coloured tape. Scott Albrecht contributes carefully made wooden assemblages, and Lennard Schuurmans offers loose, found-object signage. Graphic Surgery use laser-cut wood to layer depth into their pieces without losing their poise. Brittany Gould makes complex geometric light forms out of nothing more than paper triangles, and the result is a gentle kind of minimalism. Sandra Fettingis stacks acrylic sheets to produce depth and optical tricks. Mather himself made a small mural inside the gallery from string, things picked up off the street and mistinted paint, in the manner he calls a “shapepile”.

For a large group using such different means, it hangs together well. It feels varied and concentrated at once, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

Who is in it

Besides the artists already named, the Philadelphia leg brings in Chad Hasegawa, Mary Iverson, Remi Rough, Ramon Bonilla, Rubin 415, Liam Snootle, Nelio, 108 and Labuenaylamala, each of whom could fill a room on their own. Seventeen names in all, and very few weak pieces among them.

Paradigm, at 746 South 4th Street, kept its usual hours for the run: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, noon to six. The gallery’s exhibition page carries the curatorial statement and the dates.