William Powhida
Encyclopedia
William Powhida is a visual artist and former art critic
born in 1976 in New York
. His work addresses the contemporary art
industry.
Topics have included creating an "enemies" list as well as letters addressed to contemporary curators (such as Zach Feuer Gallery
), collectors and critics, requesting recognition. His 2009 piece "Relational Wall" includes portraits sourced from Artforum
's "Scene & Herd". He also produces portraits drawn entirely from memory.
Powhida received his Master of Fine Arts
in painting from Hunter College
in January, 2002.
as well as galleries in Williamsburg, display the physical evidence of the artist's toil, measured in sweat and coffee stains left on the paper.
He followed up his initial enemy lists with a Seattle Enemies List specific to the Pacific Northwest, targeting Tacoma-based artist Dale Chihuly
and the Northern spotted owl
among others. The 2006 exhibition at Platform gallery debuted a drawing of over 300 small head studies entitled Everyone I've ever Met from Memory (That I Can Remember), which Brooklyn Rail critic James Kalm described as a "meta-drawing" demonstrating a level of ambition and commitment to carry out the kind of stoner idea many people have but but most would not actually do. The exhibition also included hex drawings of then United States president George W. Bush
and New York-based gallerist Zach Feuer
and a fictitious Artforum
Top 10 penned by himself.
The New York Magazine blog was featured in a New York Magazine front cover, for Powhida's show at the Schroeder Romero Gallery (now Schroeder Romero & Shredder
) in 2007. The work from his solo exhibition This Is a Work of Fiction at Schroeder Romero includes a nine-page handwritten feature that plays on a feature Ariel Levy wrote about Dash Snow
for the magazine. By this time he had developed a tromp l'oeil technique, rendering pages from magazines as well as sheets of blue-lined notebook paper as if torn from real-world sources and taped to the wall. These sheets of notebook paper with lists titled "Proposals" and "Reasons" offer a comically distorted worldview that blurs the lines of fact and fiction in an ego-driven celebrity art culture.
In a 2009 drawing called "Post-Boom Odds" Powhida placed speculative bets on which young artists will matter in 10 years.
" for the November 2009 cover of the Brooklyn Rail. The drawing was released in an edition of 20 prints sold by two galleries that represent Powhida, New York’s Schroeder Romero & Shredder and LA’s Charlie James.
The name of the drawing was taken from a post on James Wagner's blog. The work features caricatures of individuals involved in the controversial New Museum exhibition, including Jeff Koons
as Howdy Doody
, which Edward Winkleman remarked is ironic considering how much Powhida's work owes to Koons. New Museum trustee at the center of the controversy, Dakis Joannou
, bought a print of Powhida’s drawing from his New York dealer for $1,500.
David W. Kiehl, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art
, said that drawings like this one, which accused the New Museum of cronyism
, expose things that are undercover that people do not want to talk about.
Powhida later responded to criticism in an article published on the Art 21 blog.
of the art world
are assembled outside the convention center in which Art Basel Miami Beach is held, and which Powhida describes as "the belly of the beast." In the bottom left corner, mega-collectors Marty Marguiles, Don Rubell, Charles Saatchi
and Eli Broad
place bets on a cockfight with miniature representations of Damien Hirst
and Jeff Koons.
New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz
described the drawing as "a great big art world stink bomb" and a much needed institutional critique
. He suggested that a museum commission Powhida to produce a one-year long project that would result in a fifteen feet high, twenty feet wide drawing of the art world as it is today.
was a month-long series of events at Winkleman Gallery in New York that took place between February 20 to March 20, 2010 organized by Powhida and artist Jennifer Dalton
. #class invited guest artists, critics
, academics, dealers
, collectors and anyone else who would like to participate to examine the way art is made and seen in our culture and to identify and propose alternatives and/or reforms to the current market system.
Powhida has long collaborated with artist Jennifer Dalton, who worked with him to produce art world condolence cards for Art Basel in 2008 and co-directed a hypothetical, post-apocalyptic art gallery for Powhida's exhibition The Writing Is on the Wall.
Critics have drawn comparisons between his art world diatribes and those of 18th and 19th century social critics and satirists William Hogarth
, Honoré Daumier
, Henri Meyer and Paul Iribe
. Critics have also pointed out the site-specificity
of his practice. For example, his 2009 exhibition at Charlie James Gallery drew on Los Angeles-based professional actors, voice talents, and film studios to produce his video "Powhida (Trailer)". Other works have investigated media portrayals of place when setting his works in New York, Seattle and Aspen, Colorado
.
Damien Cave of the New York Times, who has called Powhida the "gadfly of the art establishment," has pointed out that the artist's own rising fame presents a problem for an artist who critiques the art market as feudal and celebrity obsessed. New York dealer-turned Museum of Contemporary Art director Jeffrey Deitch
takes a similar stance, saying, "The irony is that by exposing art celebrity culture, he's becoming a celebrity himself... So hats off to him."
has argued that there are two distinct voices in the artist's work, both named William Powhida, Powhida the "character" and Powhida the "author". In a 2007 interview Powhida hinted at the idea, saying, "I do a lot of writing, fiction."
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
born in 1976 in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. His work addresses the contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
industry.
Topics have included creating an "enemies" list as well as letters addressed to contemporary curators (such as Zach Feuer Gallery
Zach Feuer Gallery
The Zach Feuer Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Chelsea, New York.-History:The Zach Feuer Gallery was founded in 2000 as the LFL Gallery, by Nick Lawrence, Russell LaMontagne and Zach Feuer. It was originally located on a fourth floor space on 26th Street...
), collectors and critics, requesting recognition. His 2009 piece "Relational Wall" includes portraits sourced from Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
's "Scene & Herd". He also produces portraits drawn entirely from memory.
Powhida received his Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
in painting from Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
in January, 2002.
Early career
In 2004 Powhida began compiling lists of enemies, rendering portraits of each enemy in graphite and gauche with insults written beneath each face. Few were spared from these lists, and his father is no exception, who is identified by the word "failure" under his portrait. These early works, which were exhibited in an exhibition at Platform GalleryPlatform Gallery
Platform Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in the Tashiro Kaplan Building in historic Pioneer Square District in Downtown Seattle. It was founded in 2004 by four artists, including Stephen Lyons, who is now sole owner. The gallery participates in the local First Thursday art walk along...
as well as galleries in Williamsburg, display the physical evidence of the artist's toil, measured in sweat and coffee stains left on the paper.
He followed up his initial enemy lists with a Seattle Enemies List specific to the Pacific Northwest, targeting Tacoma-based artist Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
and the Northern spotted owl
Northern Spotted Owl
The Northern Spotted Owl, Strix occidentalis caurina, is one of three Spotted Owl subspecies. A Western North American bird in the family Strigidae, genus Strix, it is a medium-sized dark brown owl sixteen to nineteen inches in length and one to one and one sixth pounds. Females are larger than males...
among others. The 2006 exhibition at Platform gallery debuted a drawing of over 300 small head studies entitled Everyone I've ever Met from Memory (That I Can Remember), which Brooklyn Rail critic James Kalm described as a "meta-drawing" demonstrating a level of ambition and commitment to carry out the kind of stoner idea many people have but but most would not actually do. The exhibition also included hex drawings of then United States president George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and New York-based gallerist Zach Feuer
Zach Feuer Gallery
The Zach Feuer Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Chelsea, New York.-History:The Zach Feuer Gallery was founded in 2000 as the LFL Gallery, by Nick Lawrence, Russell LaMontagne and Zach Feuer. It was originally located on a fourth floor space on 26th Street...
and a fictitious Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
Top 10 penned by himself.
The New York Magazine blog was featured in a New York Magazine front cover, for Powhida's show at the Schroeder Romero Gallery (now Schroeder Romero & Shredder
Schroeder Romero & Shredder
Schroeder Romero & Shredder is a contemporary art gallery located in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. Gallerist Lisa Schroeder has professed a preference for conceptual and sociopolitical art....
) in 2007. The work from his solo exhibition This Is a Work of Fiction at Schroeder Romero includes a nine-page handwritten feature that plays on a feature Ariel Levy wrote about Dash Snow
Dash Snow
Dashiel "Dash" Snow was an American artist, based in New York.-Life:Dashiel A. Snow was born in 1981, the son of Taya Thurman and Christopher Snow...
for the magazine. By this time he had developed a tromp l'oeil technique, rendering pages from magazines as well as sheets of blue-lined notebook paper as if torn from real-world sources and taped to the wall. These sheets of notebook paper with lists titled "Proposals" and "Reasons" offer a comically distorted worldview that blurs the lines of fact and fiction in an ego-driven celebrity art culture.
In a 2009 drawing called "Post-Boom Odds" Powhida placed speculative bets on which young artists will matter in 10 years.
How The New Museum Committed Suicide With Banality
Powhida produced a drawing called "How the New Museum Committed Suicide with BanalityHow the New Museum Committed Suicide with Banality
How The New Museum Committed Suicide With Banality is a 2009 drawing on paper by William Powhida that the Brooklyn Rail commissioned for the cover of its November 2009 issue...
" for the November 2009 cover of the Brooklyn Rail. The drawing was released in an edition of 20 prints sold by two galleries that represent Powhida, New York’s Schroeder Romero & Shredder and LA’s Charlie James.
The name of the drawing was taken from a post on James Wagner's blog. The work features caricatures of individuals involved in the controversial New Museum exhibition, including Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
as Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by E. Roger Muir and telecast on NBC in the United States from 1947 until 1960. It was a pioneer in children's television programming and set the pattern for many similar shows...
, which Edward Winkleman remarked is ironic considering how much Powhida's work owes to Koons. New Museum trustee at the center of the controversy, Dakis Joannou
Dakis Joannou
Dakis Joannou born 1941 is a Greek Cypriot industrialist and art collector based in Greece. He owns hotels and a construction business and has been a major international distributor of Coca-Cola "across 27 countries, from Greece to Switzerland to Russia to Nigeria."-Life and career:Joannou is...
, bought a print of Powhida’s drawing from his New York dealer for $1,500.
David W. Kiehl, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, said that drawings like this one, which accused the New Museum of cronyism
Cronyism
Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy....
, expose things that are undercover that people do not want to talk about.
Powhida later responded to criticism in an article published on the Art 21 blog.
Art Basel Miami Beach Hooverville
At Charlie James Gallery's booth at the Pulse Art Fair Powhida unveiled a 40 by 60 inch drawing he and artist Jade Townsend had produced called "Art Basel Miami Beach Hooverville", depicting an art world shantytown with artists, dealers, critics and curators gathering in food lines. The who's whoWho's Who
Who's Who is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biographical information on a particular group of people...
of the art world
Art world
The art world is composed of all the people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art. Howard S. Becker describes it as "the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things,...
are assembled outside the convention center in which Art Basel Miami Beach is held, and which Powhida describes as "the belly of the beast." In the bottom left corner, mega-collectors Marty Marguiles, Don Rubell, Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...
and Eli Broad
Eli Broad
Eli Broad is an American businessman from Detroit, Michigan who resides in Los Angeles, California.-Life and career:An only child, Broad was born in the Bronx to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents. His father was a housepainter, his mother was a dressmaker. His family moved to Detroit when he...
place bets on a cockfight with miniature representations of Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
and Jeff Koons.
New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz
Jerry Saltz
Jerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and a columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, Saltz has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism three times. He was the sole advisor for the 1995 Whitney...
described the drawing as "a great big art world stink bomb" and a much needed institutional critique
Institutional Critique
Institutional Critique is an art term that describes the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, for instance galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists such as Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson and Hans...
. He suggested that a museum commission Powhida to produce a one-year long project that would result in a fifteen feet high, twenty feet wide drawing of the art world as it is today.
"#class"
#classHashtagclass
#class was a month-long series of events at Winkleman Gallery in New York that took place between February 20 to March 20, 2010 organized by artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton...
was a month-long series of events at Winkleman Gallery in New York that took place between February 20 to March 20, 2010 organized by Powhida and artist Jennifer Dalton
Jennifer Dalton
Jennifer Dalton is a contemporary artist born in 1967.Dalton is represented by Winkleman Gallery in New York City, where she has exhibited since 2002...
. #class invited guest artists, critics
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
, academics, dealers
Art dealer
An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...
, collectors and anyone else who would like to participate to examine the way art is made and seen in our culture and to identify and propose alternatives and/or reforms to the current market system.
Powhida has long collaborated with artist Jennifer Dalton, who worked with him to produce art world condolence cards for Art Basel in 2008 and co-directed a hypothetical, post-apocalyptic art gallery for Powhida's exhibition The Writing Is on the Wall.
Critical reception
In his review of Powhida's 2009 exhibition The Writing Is on the Wall, Holland Cotter of the New York Times called Powhida an "art world vigilante, virtuoso draftsman, compulsive calligrapher and fantasist autobiographer." Art critic Jerry Saltz called Powhida the second best thing to happen in 2009 in his assessment of art in New York that year, praising his drawing for the Brooklyn Rail as well as his spring exhibition at Schroeder Romero.Critics have drawn comparisons between his art world diatribes and those of 18th and 19th century social critics and satirists William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
, Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
, Henri Meyer and Paul Iribe
Paul Iribe
Paul Iribe was a French designer, journalist, artist, and fashion illustrator.-Early Life and Career:Paul Iribarnegaray was born in Angoulême, France in 1883, of Basque parentage....
. Critics have also pointed out the site-specificity
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
of his practice. For example, his 2009 exhibition at Charlie James Gallery drew on Los Angeles-based professional actors, voice talents, and film studios to produce his video "Powhida (Trailer)". Other works have investigated media portrayals of place when setting his works in New York, Seattle and Aspen, Colorado
Aspen, Colorado
The City of Aspen is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the city population was 5,804 in 2005...
.
Damien Cave of the New York Times, who has called Powhida the "gadfly of the art establishment," has pointed out that the artist's own rising fame presents a problem for an artist who critiques the art market as feudal and celebrity obsessed. New York dealer-turned Museum of Contemporary Art director Jeffrey Deitch
Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects was a contemporary art gallery in New York City founded by Jeffrey Deitch.-History:Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in February 1996, the gallery has presented nearly one hundred and eighteen solo exhibitions and projects, ten thematic exhibitions, and a few...
takes a similar stance, saying, "The irony is that by exposing art celebrity culture, he's becoming a celebrity himself... So hats off to him."
Author and character
Leah Ollman of the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
has argued that there are two distinct voices in the artist's work, both named William Powhida, Powhida the "character" and Powhida the "author". In a 2007 interview Powhida hinted at the idea, saying, "I do a lot of writing, fiction."
Lifestyle
In the press release for This Is a Work of Fiction at Schroeder Romero, Powhida wrote, "I can't keep sitting around my studio getting drunk and yelling at my assistants forever." He arrived at the opening for that exhibition with a black eye and a cut. After viewing a set of Powhida's drawings about a night of hard drinking and bar fights, art critic James Kalm, taking the drawings at face value, offered the artist some personal advice on sobriety. Other accounts have described a more socially-responsible artist who works as a teacher at a public high-school in Brooklyn.Selected exhibitions
- Schroeder Romero Gallery, New York City
- Platform GalleryPlatform GalleryPlatform Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in the Tashiro Kaplan Building in historic Pioneer Square District in Downtown Seattle. It was founded in 2004 by four artists, including Stephen Lyons, who is now sole owner. The gallery participates in the local First Thursday art walk along...
, Seattle - Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn
- Galeria Arteveintiuno, Madrid, Spain
- Haines Gallery, San Francisco
- San Francisco Bar of Contemporary Art, San Francisco
- Sixtyseven Gallery, New York
- White ColumnsWhite ColumnsWhite Columns is New York City’s oldest alternative non-profit space and one of its most prestigious. White Columns is known as a show case for up and coming artists....
, New York - Charlie James GalleryCharlie James GalleryCharlie James Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles.The gallery’s focus leans toward political work that in some way questions or comments on issues of contemporary cultural significance...
, Los Angeles
Publications
In 2007 Powhida collaborated with Jeff Parker on the book Back of the Line published by Decode. Regina Hackett of the Post-Intelligencer compared his facility to the "damning exactitude of a police sketch artist." During a reading of the book in Seattle, Powhida and Parker attempted to orchestrate an attack on one of his own works.External links
- William Powhida's website
- New York Times Review for ABMB Hooverville
- New York Times Review for The Writing Is on the Wall
- David Joselit's review in Art Forum
- review by James Kalm in The Brooklyn RailThe Brooklyn RailThe Brooklyn Rail is a political, artistic and literary magazine based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Coverage includes political andliterary essays, art criticism, interviews, original fiction and poetry, and reviews....
- http://oneartworld.com/Schroeder+Romero/This+Is+A+Work+Of+Fiction......html Schroeder Romero press release