Four New York City Art Shows to See Right Now
From Asako Tabata’s meditations on mortality to Emily Janowick’s psychologically loaded corn garden, artists are turning inward.
The home, the psyche, the mortal coil — it’s barely fall and artists are already alluding to the existential territory that encroaches as each year comes to a close. Perhaps introspection is just what we need right now; as AX Mina’s art tarotscope noted last week, with the coming of the Fall Equinox, “it’s worth asking what artists and creatives can do to ease the suffering for both themselves and their communities.” Asako Tabata is certainly looking inward, with an exhibition of paintings and mixed-media works that focus on her mother’s passing and her own mortality at Seizan Gallery. Meanwhile, Emily Janowick’s corn garden at Kate Werble Gallery is both a community project and a psychic landscape that bridges the artist’s memories of her childhood in Kentucky with her current life as an artist; and a group show at BlankMag Books in Chinatown is a trip into multiple psyches through the “house-tree-person” psychological assessment test. Even Stephen Westfall’s geometric abstractions channel the varied meanings of “bird” in the artist’s angular, enigmatic forms. A requiem for seasons past or a song for those to come? Read John Yau’s review and decide for yourself. —Natalie Haddad, Reviews Editor
house-tree-person: a group iteration
BlankMag Books, 17 Eldridge Street, Chinatown, Manhattan
Through October 5
"A home, a body, our relationship to the land — these are multitudinous concepts. … Perhaps the uninterpreted, curated responses reveal as much as the standardized test itself." —Monica Uszerowicz
Emily Janowick
Kate Werble Gallery, 474 Broadway, Third Floor, Soho, Manhattan
Through October 11
"Janowick peppers her work with whimsy, from the goofiness of the orange buckets to the zine photograph of two plants wearing seatbelts while being transported in her car." —Louis Bury
Asako Tabata: Waiting for Bones
Seizan Gallery, 525 West 26th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan
Through October 18
"Tabata’s introspective solitude leads her to an unexpected, even surprising confrontation with mortality." —John Yau
Stephen Westfall: Ornithology
Alexandre Gallery, 25 East 73rd Street, Second and Third Floors, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through October 25
"Westfall has spent his career working within the geometric abstraction genre while trying to disrupt the rhythmic patterns associated with planar abstraction and Op Art." —JY
