House-tree-person (a group iteration) is a precise but capacious group show on view at BlankMag Books in New York City, co-curated by therapist Daniel Soprano and artist Jesus Antonio. The title is drawn from the House-Tree-Person assessment, a projective test and psychology tool developed by clinical psychologist John N. Buck and initially published in the journal Clinical Psychology Monographs in 1948. The assessment, designed to be interpreted similarly to its predecessor, Florence Goodenough’s Draw A Man test, is meant to uncloak unconscious feelings about the self, home, and familial relationships.
In his curatorial debut, Soprano, who is also the host of the Say You Swear podcast, invited 15 artists to respond to an adjusted version of the prompt, which is typically presented in a clinical setting. He was introduced to H-T-P himself in graduate school, “where I’d administer the test during an assessment course,” he told Hyperallergic. “I fell in love with the instant bridge between art and psychology.” A creative in his own right, he recognized that although “being an artist or designer, whatever that means in its proper sense, was not going to be in my future … I continued to have a desire to create that was not satisfied through my work as a therapist.”
As in a therapeutic environment, the artists’ interpretations of the H-T-P prompts are vast and varied. Hunter Ney’s collaged house, tree, and person are small, layered universes, the tree shadowy, green, and accompanied by Tinkerbell; the person not one individual but two, nearly obscured by a crimson spiral. Sarame Sahgal responded to the prompt with Polaroids of a tiny house placed on a warmly lit bed, a splayed tree trunk with limb-like branches, and a person rendered nearly invisible by vivid sunlight. For Lee Dawson, who utilized a combination of watercolor, markers, and graphite on paper, each response is abstract, like beautiful oil spills.
“H-T-P lends itself well to a group exhibition,” Soprano explained, given the test’s inherent flexibility. The exhibition has an easy tidiness; each work is displayed in uniform frames, the prompt responses arranged vertically. Maith Logan’s watercolor and graphite “house” is, in part, a person — a feminine figure encircled by trees, located “where you’re at peace,” a note says. (What good is a home without an inhabitant to protect?)
Shana Sadeghi-Ray made three digital prints, each comprised of 35 smaller images: chandeliers, seashells, and furniture for the house; honey bears, Christmas trees, and leaves for the tree; and enwombed infants, a Kewpie doll, and an X-ray for the person. A home, a body, our relationship to the land — these are multitudinous concepts. A chair can be associated with home, a doll with a living entity. Perhaps the uninterpreted, curated responses reveal as much as the standardized test itself.
house-tree-person (a group iteration) continues at BlankMag Books (17 Eldridge Street, Chinatown, Manhattan) through October 5. The exhibition was curated by Daniel Soprano and Jesus Antonio. Ten percent of the exhibition’s proceeds will be donated to the American Art Therapy Association.
