My contribution to _Dirty Kunst, _an exhibition on the boundary of good tasteat Seventeen Gallery in London, is limited two works, You and this piece. _Rant I _is a response to a critique of my Work of Art rant* that I heard on the internets, “Powhida is cashing in on Work of Art as much as anyone with his rant.” Well, if I could deposit attention in my bank account or pay my landlord rent with it _that’d be true._ It’s part of a common assumption that artists are ‘paid’ with critical and popular attention. Sure, attention is a social currency, but inevitably a social one that is expected to translate into economic currency later with sales. At the time of the original critique, I did not have an object to translate that social currency into cash. So, In order to more _effectively cash in_ on the rant, I proceeded to revise the original text using graphite and colored pencils in the form of a large drawing, that looks like a ‘carpet of words’. I think it would make a lovely shower curtain as well. When and if I am able to sell _Rant I_, (and as the title implies, I’m sure there will be more), then the critique _**will definitely be true.** I am trying to cash in on Work of Art._ The show was a waste of time and an insult to artists everywhere. In a perfect world, this would sell for 100k and end up in the Brooklyn Museum. I have no problem exploiting that show and telling you what I think about it at the same time. *If you actually finished the original rant, you will find this changes significantly as it progresses. **_DIRTY KUNST_**18th November - 23rd December 2010PV Thurs 18th November 6pmJota Castro (FR/PE), Graham Dolphin (UK), Sebastian Errazuriz (CL), Rochelle Feinstein(USA), Tom Gallant (UK), S. Mark Gubb (UK), Michael Joo (USA), Patrick Hamilton (CL),William Powhida (USA), Walter Robinson (USA), Guy Richards Smit (USA), LisaYuskavage (USA)These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade. - PlutarchLife is a four-letter word. So is art when pushed past polite boundaries. You don’t have to be Lenny Bruceto know that the first commandment of comedy is ‘leave half the audience laughing and the other halfhorrified.’ Rude art, like rude words, straightens spines and unbuckles straitened belts. Filth frightens,provokes, angers and just plain disgusts. Sometimes it proves outright liberating. Reason and good senseoften blanch when faced with graffiti on the bathroom wall.Dirty Kunst is a show with Tourette’s. An exhibition of artists committed to what George Orwell calledsignificant ‘mental rebellions,’ it lives and breathes according to the idea that there is no such thing as dirtyart, just dirty minds. A rough version of the hippie mandate to ‘speak truth to power,’ the spirit behind thisbatch of ‘dirty kunst’ is one that seeks out extreme responses. Cruelty, venality, lubriciousness, perversity,black humour, misanthropy - all of these count as genuine paths to artistic expression and - why not - acertain twisted redemption.About the Curator: _Christian Viveros-Fauné is a New York-based writer and curator. He has curatedexhibitions at Mexico’s Museum of Modern Art and Chile’s Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende. Heis the inaugural critic-in-residence 2010-2011 at The Bronx Museum. He writes the Free-Lance column forArtReview and criticism for The Village Voice._
[caption id=“attachment_1251” align=“aligncenter” width=“760” caption=“You, 18” x 24" Watercolor, oil paint, colored pencil on panel, 2010. Exhibiting in Dirty Kunst at Seventeen Gallery in London."]
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Image: A Guide to the Market Oligopoly System, 11" x 14", Graphite on paper, 2010
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11" x 14", Watercolor and graphite on paper, 2007. Courtesy of the artist.[/caption] A few weeks ago my friend Ryan Schneider and I were in Chelsea for the closing of _The Big Picture _at Priska Juschka. Ryan and Tom Sanford had curated the show of very large paintings from a group of painters who all embrace some aspect of the expressionist tradition. Well, not all. One female artist in the group painted much closer Tom’s comic realism than say, I don’t know, anything else in the show. (Apologies to Tom and Ryan, I early posted there was only one woman in the show. Actually, Liz Marcus, Holly Coulis, Emily Lambert, Colleen Asper and Lisa Sanditz had paintings in the show).While I respect Ryan and Tom, our tastes in painting tend to diverge from a shared sense of the absurd and bear little resemblance after that. Overall, I thought it was an interesting show. When Ryan told me that a New York Times fact checker had called the gallery, the show was all but certain to get a coveted Roberta Smith Friday Times review. Then, a funny and familiar thing happened. The review never ran. Maybe Ryan, Tom, and the gallery shouldn’t have asked for the review to be pushed back into September even if the show would closed during August. I mean, the point of a review isn’t really to drive foot traffic. It’s to legitimize the prices of work and give explicit permission to collectors to drop some cash. Ryan was pretty much crushed, and to add insult to injury, the Times ran that lovely ode to Gagosian and Dan Colen on the front page the day the review never ran. While, I’m not arguing that the Big Picture show should or should not have gotten a Times review (These guys are my friends), it was at some point in the pipe line for publication. Back in 2007, when I had my first solo show with Schroeder Romero, Holland Cotter dropped by on the last day of the show and while leafing through the press for the show said “I thought we covered this,” as he flipped through the book, clearly not seeing a NY Times review. Now, I have no idea who, if anyone, was actually going to write about the show, but I decided it had to have been Roberta. Why? In a small drawing in the show titled “What Not To Do” one of the directives was “Tell Jerry and Roberta to fuck off.” I like to believe that killed the review, somehow. To that end, I decided to write the review anyway. I’ve been thinking about this drawing since Ryan was nearly crushed by great expectations, and my friend @artlthr sent me this link to Dave Muller’s drawing “Smith” and “Re-Smith”. It made me feel old, but also vaguely justified in doing this in 2007. Nope, I don’t feel old and apparently Dave Muller was doing his Times review pieces decades ago. Way before I ever thought about it. Image: Art in Review, 11" x 14", Watercolor and graphite on paper, 2007. Courtesy of the artist.
Emily Falvey’s excellent
essay
that discusses my work. This text was first published in the Montreal contemporary art magazine esse arts + opinions, No. 69 Bling-Bling (Spring/Summer 2010).
