The three rows of cornstalks presently rising in Kate Werble Gallery convey each heartache and hope, although not for causes you would possibly anticipate. For the reason that summer time, artist Emily Janowick has been rising dozens of such vegetation inside orange Residence Depot buckets: first whereas in residency at Storm King Artwork Middle, then in her tiny Queens yard. On the gallery, the buckets are organized on lengthy wood plinths primarily based on their stalks’ heights, as if the vegetation had been schoolchildren lined up in measurement order. The set up is titled “Obsession” (2025), after the number of corn being grown, which is the primary clue that it’s one thing apart from a creative experiment in meals manufacturing.
The second is the intense yellow zine revealed to accompany the exhibition. It accommodates a laconic “Corn Diary,” during which the artist, born and raised in Kentucky, displays on either side of her ancestry: sharecroppers and moonshiners who grew and relied upon corn, respectively. A Joan Didion quote concerning the problem of returning dwelling serves because the diary’s epigraph. A number of grainy pictures doc Janowick’s creative course of, together with a picture of the “weeds growing sequentially in a row in a sidewalk crack” that impressed the cornstalks’ measurement order association within the gallery.
Set up view of Emily Janowick, “Obsession” (2025)
The exhibition’s conceit — that rising corn would possibly reduce the artist’s familial alienation — is directly droll and earnest. Janowick peppers her work with whimsy, from the goofiness of the orange buckets to the zine {photograph} of two vegetation sporting seatbelts whereas being transported in her automobile. But the care she invests within the course of is useless critical. The diary recounts not solely her makeshift agricultural labor but in addition her psychic funding in its outcomes. She asks her father about his household historical past, which warms him to the mission. She frets that she’s not doing sufficient to domesticate the corn correctly, and has a number of goals during which the vegetation die earlier than the present’s opening.
The vegetation had been alive and properly after I visited early within the exhibition’s run. To my shock, tiny ears of corn had been budding on the extra developed stalks. The air was heat and sticky; the lights shiny and white. The improbability, even absurdity, of Janowick’s agricultural endeavor feels integral to the set up’s aesthetic success. The artist is aware of that “Obsession” can’t singlehandedly mend familial or cultural rifts. As a substitute, she’s attempting to expertise these rifts from one other perspective — to not construct metaphorical bridges however to reach at one thing like acceptance. The trouble creates a small house for hope, even when, like weeds in a sidewalk crack, its flourishing has been hard-earned, its continued viability tenuous.
Element of Emily Janowick, “Obsession” (2025)
Element of Emily Janowick, “Obsession” (2025)
Set up view of Emily Janowick, “Obsession” (2025)
Emily Janowick continues at Kate Werble Gallery (474 Broadway, Third Ground, Soho, Manhattan) by way of October 11. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
