Griftopia. Graphite, watercolor, acrylic ink, and colored pencil on paper. 5’ x 10’. 2011. Courtesy of Postmasters Gallery. Private Collection.
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Composite [Arts Magazine], No. 4 Doppelganger
William Powhida: Infinite Regress, page 9
(Link to the PDF)
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POWHIDA
Marlborough Chelsea / July 27-August 12, 2011
The directors of Marlborough Chelsea are pleased to announce POWHIDA, a site-specific project by
the eponymous artist opening Wednesday, July 27th. The exhibition will be on view through August
12th.
Utilizing the entire ground floor gallery, POWHIDA is the artist’s most ambitious installation to date.
In keeping with his oeuvre, Powhida has taken his relationship with the art world as the very subject
of the exhibition, employing numerous historical departure points and creating a vast conceptual
spectrum reflected in the diversity of the artist’s approaches to making art. These references span from
the 19th-century French Romantic painters Delacroix and Gericault to participatory performance that
de-materializes the object.
Like the artist himself, POWHIDA explores an array of contemporary socio-political and cultural
issues germane to the artist’s role in society. In the vein of Arthur Dove’s The Critic, 1925, and Ad
Reinhardt’s sardonic How to Look at Modern Art in America, 1946, POWHIDA unabashedly turns a
mirror on the idiosyncratic machinations of the industry, allowing an established international artist to
look at his role from the inside out.
The artist’s reverence for Duchamp and Warhol is central to understanding POWHIDA as an
installation of non-traditional art objects throughout the gallery; these objects signify a contextual
shift from the merely functional to the purposely artistic. To signal this shift, the artist himself will
be physically present in the gallery operating as an autonomous artwork to further engage the viewer,
building on the exhaustive performances pioneered by Vito Acconci, Stuart Brisely, and Marina
Abramovic.
The artist and objects themselves are the very means with which POWHIDA will coalesce into a
divergent, yet coterminous installation immersing the viewer in a manner similar to Oldenburg’s The
Store, 1961-62, the experiential amalgamations of Jason Rhoades, and more recently, Black Acid Co-Op,
the functional meth lab created by Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe installed at Deitch Projects, New
York in 2009. While these installations required significant material alterations, POWHIDA strips the
Gallery to its essence, laying it bare.
In the artist’s words, “The gallery is a world unto itself, a social space with a highly codified set of
relationships having the formal beauty of a ballet. I will transform it, literally, choreographing each
movement, each gesture with every interaction. No two viewers will have a similar experience in the
gallery if I can help it. They may never see an art gallery the same way again.”
POWHIDA is generously supported by Flavorpill, The Mondrian Soho and Pernod-Absinthe. A fully
illustrated digital catalogue will be available at the time of the exhibition.
Marlborough Chelsea / International Public Art Ltd., 545 West 25th St, New York, NY 10001 t. 212.463.8634 f. 212.463.9658 chelsea@marlboroughgallery.com
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My contribution to Colorific: We Make An Art Rainbow opening Friday July 15th at Postmasters Gallery from 6 – 8 pm.
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Jonathan Rider, 2011, Bit, Paper, cardboard, plastic, aluminum, wood, 1.25 x 1.5 x .25 inches
microwave, eight
June 30 – September 3, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 30 from 6-8pm
“No pretext, no effect, no message: microwave identifies an international group of artists who deliberately reduce their movements and expressive media.
These artists imperceptibly move their fingertips to create works of precision and minimal displacement in a quasi-monochromatic context: syntheses and syntactics that recall the reductionism of genetic maps or binary codes.
But this intimacy doesn’t require mouse or keyboard, it is a dialogue of fingertips: art positively digital. The works stand on the borderline between drawing, knitting and writing. A meticulous discipline of the close-up at the antipodes of the instantaneous and the remote control.” (microwave, one, catalogue, 123 Watts, 1999)
Since 1999, the (almost) annual edition of microwave has been an opportunity to confirm the emergence of a new attitude. Microwave identifies an international host of artists who commit to the obscene activity of paying attention. With intense focus, patience and precision, the artists in microwave document the relentless propagation of delicacy as a subversive activity. The works in microwave touch upon the fragile nature of communication, exchange, and currency.
Josée Bienvenu gallery is pleased to present microwave, eight- an exhibition of works by international artists who set up various processes of fragmentation and erosion of information. Close attention is given to execution, a concentration on the production process itself.
Clement Bagot
Steven Bindernagel
Ajit Chauhan
Gustavo Diaz
Curtis Mann
Justin McAllister
Julianne Swartz
Todd Norsten
William Powhida
Jonathan Rider
Rebecca Salter
Mathias Schmied
Lauren Seiden
Jill Sylvia
Ana Tiscornia
Daniel Zeller
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It’s my pleasure to announce two new things. First, I am now represented by Postmasters Gallery run by the excellent Magda Sawon, Tamas Banovich, and their assistant Paulina Bebecka. I’m currently working on my first solo show with them this October. I look forward to working with them in New York having long admired their challenging program. Second, I’m pleased to present my first letterpress print, The 1%, a philosophy of the super wealthy. The print grew out of a request by artist Michelle Vaughan to produce something for her husband Felix Salmon’s birthday. Something relatively small turned into a rather ambitious typesetting project that Michelle executed at The Arm letterpress in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Michelle took on a major challenge in typesetting and printing the work. It was a pleasure to work with her on the print, and Felix now has #1. Alright, enough self-promotion, having been shamed by Peter Plagens for using my blog to promote my work, I’m going to make a news section for this stuff. Self-promotion is a shitty job but somebody had to do it for the last 9 months…
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Ellie Ga and Jenny Vogel will be performing this Saturday evening at 8pm at Storefront Gallery as part of the exhibition, Dunkle Wolke. Ellie will be giving her performative lecture, Catalogue of the Lost (and other revelations), which has only be performed once before in New York at St. Mark’s Church. Jenny Vogel will also be performing her piece, Invitation to a Duel. Drawing from the archive of her grandfather’s tape recordings Jenny Vogel creates a DIY opera that weaves together her family’s history and fiction to tell a story of tragedy and loss.
Both artists employ narrative as a departure point for further exploration of the territories established in their work in the show.
The performances will begin at 8pm and each run about 20 minutes. Seating will be very limited, so please arrive early or RSVP with me at powhida@gmail.com. The exhibition was also recently reviewed on Arnet by Emily Nathan.
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Dunkle Wolke
an exhibition organized by William Powhida
June 3-26Opening Reception: Friday, June 3, 6-9PM
STOREFRONT
16 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn
open weekends 1-6PM
(646) 361-8512
From I See a Darkness, Bonny ‘Prince’ Billy
well you’re my friend
(it’s what you told me)
and can you see
(what’s inside of me)
many times
we’ve been out drinking
and many times
we’ve shared our thoughts
but did you ever, ever notice
the kind of thoughts I got
well you know I have a love
a love for everyone I know
and you know I have a drive
to live I won’t let go
but can you see its opposition
comes a-rising up sometimes
that it’s dreadful and position
comes blacking in my mind
and that I see a darkness
and that I see a darkness
and that I see a darkness
and that I see a darkness
and did you know how much I love you
is a hope that somehow you you
can save me from this darkness
__________
The artists in Dunkle Wolke are people I consider to be friends, or at least people I’ve shared a drink and a discussion about art with. They are artists who also have some experience with darkness in all its forms from the purely formal to the emotional weight of loneliness. They talk about darkness as a condition of their environment, history, politics, a color, or personal relationships that often takes on the form of what Bjoern Meyer-Ebrecht describes as an ‘ominous shape’. For me, the ominous shape is an expression of anxiety about the production of art and a search for meaning in an often chaotic world where historical narratives break down into reality without the authority of history and moral intention. Through the process of putting reality into a narrative, we attempt give it meaning making it a contentious site to be written and unwritten giving rise to a tension between form and language.
These tensions between reality and history, language and form are present in the works of the artists, all of whom I think about when I consider art’s relationship to the authority of history and its certainty of intention, which I do not share. Bill Abdale’s series of large-scale charcoal drawings examine the surfaces of the books he has read including Dosteyevsky’s meditation on morality “Crime and Punishment”. Through the process of reproduction, Bill traces what has been lost, scarred, and destroyed through use and interpretation. Ellie Ga’s performance, “Catalog of the Lost”, seeks to rediscover what has been presumed to be lost to history by exploring the fate of an arctic expedition. Her photographs in the show, “Fissures” are beautiful documents of her own 5 month arctic expedition, which was as much as an inward exploration as it was of the environment her ship became literally frozen in. David McBride’s dark paintings of grottos and sunsets contrast starkly with his own abstract forms, painstakingly rendered with subtle corruptions of color and registration. The tensions between the precision of his CMK process and touch create an anxious state that is mirrored in the curious relationship between representation and abstraction in his paintings. They share an uneasy co-existence that also marks Bjoern Meyer-Ebrechts sculptures and re-assembled books. The relationship between Modernist theory, represented by soft cover textbooks, and their abstract supports is uncertain, undermining the authority of both. This textual cityscape is also paired with black hard-cover books Bjoern has reshaped into angular, winged forms that imply another kind of horizon in space, echoing the tension between flatness and depth in all the artists’ pictoral space. Jenny Vogel’s video of a slowly spinning meteorite perhaps encapsulates these tensions, as the alien form threatens to invade the world, scraping against the surface of the screen. It may also be the ultimate ominous shape, a truly free-floating darkness that rises up in opposition.
All of the works are equivocal representations of time, distance, and space with unfixed beginnings and end points that remain ominously close to darkness and the ambiguity of vision. They question our certainty about history, but they don’t give in to chaos. They are rescued by beauty, maybe even love without sentimentality, a love for process and possibility that art can provide some meaning and relief to the anxiety of living. Even I have to believe that sometimes.
-William Powhida
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44 1/2" x 7', graphite and adhesive on paper. Photo: John Michael Kohler Arts Center (www.jmkac.org)
On view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin as part of the exhibition, Hiding Places: Memory in the Arts
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