ONNI - Art & Design Group Exhibition

Ole Aakjær, Michael Ajerman, Hanna Anonen, George William Bell, Sabrina Bezerra, Hannah Bigeleisen, Jeffrey Close, Sophie Collé, Monica Curiel, Pia Dehne, Julia Elsas, Joana Galego, Shayla Giroux, Sarah Holloway, Hemmo Honkonen, Hot Wire Extensions, Yuxuan Huang, Elisa Jensen, Kawabi, Anna Kesäniemi, Jihyun Kim, Yuri Kobayashi, Jiří Krejčiřík, Hannah Lim, Luft Tanaka Studio, Kritika Manchanda, Anders Scrmn Meisner, Stephanie Monteith, Santeri Mortti, Siiri Oksanen, Fran O’Neill, Paula Pääkkönen, Platform Studio, Carlo Raymann, Salù Iwadi Studio, Allison E. Samuels, Inderjeet Sandhu, Joseph Santore, Mansi Shah, Soft-geometry, Elaine Speirs, Cat Spilman, Gideon Summerfield, Camille Tan, Fernanda Uribe-Horta, Vy Voi, Frank Webster, Devin Wilde, Hugo Winder-Lind, Thomas Yang, Didi NG Wing Yin, Caroline Zimbalist Isabel Sullivan Gallery in Tribeca becomes home to a new kind of holiday market. Co-curated by two women gallery owners, Lin Tyrpien of Lyle Gallery and Isabel Sullivan, ONNI – Art & Design Holiday Market blends the best parts of a pop-up, a design fair, and an art exhibition. The Mission Behind ONNI The young gallerists’ mission is to offer an antidote to frantic holiday shopping – an experience shaped by the warmth and unique identity of the Nordic aesthetic. “Our dream was to create a holiday market that feels like stepping into the home of that stylish friend with an amazing eye for interiors,” explains Isabel Sullivan. ONNI is a New York experience that will hijack your Instagram feed and make you reconsider every gift you’ve ever panic-bought on December 23rd. Think pistachio-green walls, hygge vibes, a playground for pretty, witty, luxury objects. You can flip through prints, smell pine in the air, and interact with objects and our ONNI community. Among the objects, you will find a wooden Wi-Fi modem cover so perfectly carved it turns the ugliest thing in your apartment into a conversation piece; a dollhouse-style clock that feels like Wes Anderson took up carpentry; or a glass popsicle that looks like it escaped from a very chic, very exclusive freezer. “It's a market for the joyfully curious, but at the same time this is an exhibition that reflects the standards of our more than two decades of combined industry experience,” explains Isabel Sullivan. “We curated work from over forty artists and designers from around the world – artists whose work has been collected by major museums, sold in the MoMA Design Store, shortlisted for the Loewe Craft Prize, and commissioned for prestigious collections as far as Buckingham Palace.” Nordic Inspiration Nearly a quarter of the artists come from Finland, the world’s happiest country. The concept was named after the Finnish word onni, which carries a heartfelt tone in Finnish culture. It translates to a state of happiness and contentment, the joy of a shared moment, or the pleasure in giving or receiving something meaningful. Sullivan, who spends part of each year in Helsinki, was struck by the sophistication of Finnish holiday markets. She asked herself, what if a New York art gallery and a Finnish design market had a December baby? “New Yorkers and Finns aren’t that different,” Sullivan laughs. “We both live on caffeine, most of us dress in black, and we pretend we’re unfazed — New Yorkers by whatever happens on the subway, Finns by the fact that the sun disappears for half the year.” Sullivan continues, “I also learned that in Finland, collecting is actually a big part of the gift giving culture, whether it's a timeless piece of Finnish glassware that reflects the country’s deep design heritage, or the new line of Moomin mugs that come out every Christmas.” The glassworks that dominated under the Christmas tree for generations belonged to male icons like Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck, and Oiva Toikka. Tyrpien and Sullivan were determined to find a fresh voice in contemporary glassblowing. “Finding out that Paula Pääkkönen was going to participate was like getting a callback for your dream job. She’s one of the most exciting glass artists of our generation,” says Sullivan and Tyrpien. ”Pääkkönen and her delicious glass popsicles are doing to Finnish glass sculpture what American artists did to painting in the 1950s and 60s: taking everyday images from pop and consumer culture and elevating them into the realm of fine art.” Why This Moment Needs ONNI In a year when the internet is so oversaturated with AI slop that even Vine is making a comeback as an act of rebellion, ONNI steps in like a physical “Hide AI content” button. At its core, ONNI celebrates the human traces of labor – the marks of carving on a wood stool, the urgency of rapidly applied brushstrokes, the gesture of an imperfect ceramic. “It’s getting harder to tell what’s real anymore, and I think that’s why people are turning back to artists. When so much is being generated, people want what only humans can make. I believe the arts have real power in this moment, and ONNI was created with that in mind,” Tyrpien says.