William Powhida

Reflecting his background as an art critic for the Brooklyn Rail, William Powhida’s work displays a concentrated fascination with the politics of access and the powers that control the assignment of value in the artworld. All roles are fair game, from nouveau-hot artists and the market-setting collectors that buy them, to the branded dealers that sell the work and the critics paid to provide intellectual justification for the price points. To soften what might appear a direct editorial voice, Powhida projects his commentary through the lens of an alter-ego, one with whom he shares a name (William Powhida). This alter-ego closely resembles any number of freshly minted art world “geniuses,” though Powhida’s character happens to exhibit all of the worst traits imaginable in any coddled enfant-terrible art star. The fictional Powhida is petulant, narcissistic, and debauched. He has enormous feelings of entitlement, and a perspective so firmly rooted in solipsism that it seems an impossible exaggeration.

This art star on the verge of self-immolation documents his misery and rage against the manifold injustices of the art world through a series of To Do Lists, Enemies Lists, and monomaniacal screeds that take on the look of disturbed 3am rants. Powhida’s works–from the character’s first-person attacks to press profiles by the New York Post, the LA Weekly, and 944 Magazine–are all rendered in beautiful trompe l’oeil compositions that use various combinations of graphite, gouache, and colored pencil on either panel or paper. It is in fact the visual presentation of Powhida’s arguments, coupled with their humor, that makes his sometimes scathing commentaries so much fun to digest.

Powhida has exhibited locally and internationally, including at The Wattis Institute in San Francisco, Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Abrons Art Center in New York, Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, Plymouth Arts Centre in the UK, and Artspace in New Haven.

Courtesy of Charlie James Gallery