A close friend of mine, Seth Goodman, is having an opening for a new series of work he completed during a six-week residency tomorrow night, Friday July 29th at 245 Varet St (3rd floor) from 6 - 9 pm in Bushwick off the Morgan L stop. The show will be followed by a rooftop party so bring some beer, brown liquor, or whatever and check out these paintings. If you can’t make it the gallery will be open Saturday from noon to six. Maybe don’t eat right before you show up though. _See below “However repulsing or depressing.” _While repulsion may threaten to overwhelm the viewer, seriously these are hard to stare into, these are made of the stuff that goes viral on YouTube, you can’t avert your eyes. The operative word being viral here.

Artist’s Statement:The paintings shown in the exhibition “I’m With Stupid” examine issues relating to American social class by carving into the lowest socioeconomic rungs to mine for imagery and attitude.Extreme bodily references are meant to elevate the commonplace cultural thirsting for sex and violence to a level that tests the viewer’s tolerance to digest the interests and way of life of America’s underclass.The general folly and predicaments of the painted characters are often birthed from motifs and sayings printed on novelty or lowbrow tee shirts.The quips then explode to take over the character’s space asking one to more deeply consider the meaning of the text that loudly projects, full-frontal, to all passers-by.Everything depicted in the work exists in some form in our cultural sphere, however repulsive or depressing it may be.Ultimately, the paintings are asking the viewer how they relate to these truths and what it means if they must turn away.-Seth Goodman, 2010

The world is bleeding and times are strange indeed. While there seems to be some renewed interest in the Occult spreading through the art world, I am a little freaked out by the believers. I prefer the idea of magic as a metaphor for the powerful beliefs surrounding the art world, but I don’t think I’m actually channeling Lucifer. I’m trying to channel you. Actually, I’m bullshitting you according to Emily Falvey in the new issue of Esse magazine. Falvey talks about kitsch, bullshit, and Post-Modernism in her really smart article, which tries to explain why bullshitting is a “mode of creativity” that offers a particular kind of freedom for invention. It’s a tricky article. Falvey ultimately suggests that the solution to dealing with the end of post-modernism may not to re-think Modernism again, but that “the only way out may be in.” This is the tricky part, because I agree with her that the critical tropes of post-modernism long ago transcended the reaction to Modernism and have become productive ways of working that aren’t simply ironic reversals. Post-modernism has gone way past David Salle’s juxtapositions of pop imagery and ab-ex paintings, Schnabel’s shattered plates, or Koons' floating basketballs. Now they look comically simple compared to the level of engagement artists have taken with ideas of uncertainty and narrative content, I’m thinking of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle. He’s an excellent bullshitter, where being right or wrong is not as important as being inventive. Modernism, in the Greenbergian aesthetic sense, had no room for story, character, or symbolism.So, I look forward to thinking more about Emily’s essay, but I’ve been too busy bullshitting_working_ on several projects to go any further than my initial reaction here. Hrag Vartanian recently posted some images from my lecture “Surviving the Art World Using the Art of Sorcery” at the Hyperallergic office. It was the inaugural lecture in a new series Hrag and his publisher-partner Veken will be presenting. The lecture was absurd and still-in-development, but that is exactly what Hrag and Veken want to present; works-in-progress, not just finished projects. If it felt experimental, well, it was. I just shipped three new magic composites to Copenhagen for a group show organized by Ryan Schneider at Gallery Poulsen. The show could have been titled Fucktards, Circle Jerk, or Seven Douchebags, but they settled on Irrascible Assholes. I apologize that we couldn’t find a single female asshole for the show, but I wasn’t curating this one.“The Irrascible Assholes: New Paintings From New York” **Ryan schneider (US), Tom Sanford (US), Aaron Johnson (US),**Daniel Heidkamp (US), Van Hanos (US), William Powhida (US) **Jamison Brosseau (US)** Vernissage june 18 from 5 pm - 8 pm The show runs until july 16, 2010 But I am organizing (I’m not sure what we are doing is curating) a group show at Platform Gallery in Seattle called “Magicality” with Eric Trosko. The show opens July 1st and includes artists Sarada Rauch, Garric SimonsenKristen Jensen, Jade Townsend, Megan Laborious, David Bates, Baptiste Ibar, Letha Wilson, Steve Pauley, and more (we are still looking and thinking) whose work suggests an application of or connection with magic. There are believers and non-believers whose work is deals with questions of how belief and faith create power and value. I’ll post our statement soon and more detailed information as we conjure it from that nebulous space that is thought.

_Talisman I, _graphite and watercolor on paper, 2010
I’m happy to announce that my performance/lecture/experiment “Surviving the Art World Using the Art of Sorcery” at Hyperallergic on May 14th has already filled up. I will be discussing the magical aspects of art including illusionism, conjuration, alchemy and drawing power from malign art world entities. I will also be presenting a new work in progress for the operation of composite art magic. While some of the forms are borrowed from traditional black magic this is a highly personalized, composite magic made with common studio materials. I will also perform certain magical operations that use the ability of the mind to alter the physical world and bridge the gap between what is and what is desired. In the words of A.E. Waite “You have to be good to do evil.”

I’ve been laying low since #class ended, but perhaps too low. I should’ve mentioned that I have new works in a group show Mirror, Mirror at Postmasters Gallery curated by Magda Sawon. The show is up through May 8th and features a new large-scale mixed media work called Cosmology #1 where I organized my personal art world ‘angels and demons’ around D&D character alignments; chaotic neutral, lawful good, chaotic evil…I know, it’s absurd but it seemed appropriate. If that’s not enough to draw you in Yevgeny Fiks and Kate Gilmore have stand out pieces in a great show. Check out the ARTslant review here.

I’ve also literally been reading up on Black Magic having just finished A.E. Waite’s “The Book of Black Magic” detailing many talismans, seals, sigils, and powers of various demons. While it might appear incongruous with my practice there are some interesting parallels about the power of invoking specific names that I feel is worth exploring. Anyway, I’m not practicing Satanic rituals (I’d have to kill one or two of the cats that live in my studio building and I don’t like what that suggests, although there are seven of them running amok), but I am working on a composite system of my own. Some of these are for my publishing residency at the Lower East Side Printshop, as well as for a show I am co-curating with Eric Trosko at Platform Gallery in Seattle that will be opening July 1st (tentatively). We may try and summon a demon to revive the ritualistic first Thursdays and compel the Mentats out there to buy art, although not even Lucifuge Rocofale may be able to compel the Microsoft drones to embrace their humanity. If you do happen to make art that aspires to be magic, not so much about magic, but that actually involves making something happen send me an email or leave a comment. I’d love to check it out.

Reading Paddy Johnson’s post “This Week in Comments Part Two: Powhida!" and the accompanying comments made me realize why Jade Townsend and I made the drawing the first place. The art world is a big ‘catastrofuc’k to borrow a term from a Miami NewTimes writer. Apparently, the dude doesn’t have a problem with a drawing that depicts the art world’s yearly descent on Miami or share the insular criticisms of the insular art world. Most of the criticism of the drawing reflects right back on the authors who are players in this game. Really, that’s one of the points of the drawing. If you engage in the commercial market, you are not an outsider. Neither Jade, wait remember there was another dude who contributed to the drawing over six months, nor I are outsiders. We don’t claim to be and have never claimed to be, but every time people ignore Jade, you make him feel like one! As far as employing a persona for this drawing, I didn’t and I make a couple of different bodies of work. This can be confusing to people, especially Paddy. In some drawings, I employ a satirical voice like in “Why You Should Buy Art.” In other paintings like the LA Weekly painting at Pulse I make work about a fictional version of “William Powhida”. Why? Because Eli Broad isn’t going to buy me and put in BCAM so I can meltdown Jeff Koons’ balloon dog. I get to write fictional satire of the art world. Then, sometimes, I make things like “Hooverville” or work with other people on art projects like #class. The outcome of this varied way of working is that you have to pay attention to what kind of art you are looking at. This might be an unreasonable request, but I don’t really care about making people feel comfortable. Fuck you! So, Howard Halle says “The art world is in need of deep reform and has been for a long time. it would be nice of artists really addressed that, mainly I think, by working for themselves first. I don’t see that happening in Powhida’s work.” I do work for myself, Howard, and I’m trying to exploit my betters' wealth, power, and fame, and this is the hard part, to call attention to the GIANT, GLARING class disparity in the art world. The Hooverville drawing isn’t for Howard Halle who calls for reform, but I bet the dude doesn’t have five practical reforms to offer. (Howard you can prove me wrong and leave them as comments here) The drawing isn’t just about navel gazing at the art world, but to point out that it’s run buy a plutocracy, and there is giant excess supply of labor ie., artists, who are routinely fucked by the system and too terrified to do anything about it because t_hey are made to feel like they are replaceable._ The imbalance of power is repulsive. Putting aside that Jade and I went specific to grab people’s attention, the drawing is a satirical representation of our shared experiences going down to Miami and seeing the fucked up hierarchy of the art world reflected through all its' participants, Paddy included. Jade and I weren’t comprehensive by any stretch. The drawing is a semi-autobiographical portrait based on our experiences and limited knowledge of the art world. We threw in artists we love and want to support and people we can’t stand. Paddy’s in there because she is a comedian, and resists easy judgments of people like strippers. We love strippers. The Brainstormers, Kevin Regan, Andrew Hurst, David Petersen, Daniel Hesidence, Doug McQueen, Navin Norling, and many others are in the drawing because they represent artists we know in the hierarchy of the art world. For sure we make fun of the wealthy, the famous, and the powerful. They are part of a star system that is chewing on my fucking leg right now, bleeding out what little integrity I have left, but I’m not rich and celebrity isn’t power. If you envy this, _I’ll trade it right now for some money_. You can have it. When I was in Miami in December fretting over the Times article that had just come out, Paddy and Hrag demanded I come out and enjoy it. They, and you, probably think that I am being disingenuous when I say the attention is troubling to me, but I’m not. The best thing about the Times article was that it wasn’t some vanity profile in Vanity magazine. It got into the contradictions of ‘pissing on my betters’ to call attention that we labor in a star system that will not benefit most of us, certainly not the scores of art students spat out of the ponzi scheme of academia. No, you are probably not going to make much money or even land a decent job in a cultural center (aka city) even if you get an MFA. Howard Halle is right on that score and any sense of entitlement young artists have should be wiped out immediately. As for the drawing being topical or mattering in ten years, I hope that like Ad Reinhardt’s (thanks for the spell check _asshole_) cartoons from the 1950’s they will shed light on the conditions of being an artist in the pre and post-boom, late-capitalist, personality driven star system that drives the art world. I’ve been doing this since 2005. Take a look at my website. Before that I made personal narratives that were only as interesting as my own life. I can’t imagine that MOST of the shit produced in the last decade will matter in ten or twenty years. I hope that the deer antlers, disco balls, glitter n' glue, and neo-neo expressionist paintings gets crushed in the trash compactor of history. I know it will, and likely so will much of my art, but I think that any value it has is more about the sociology and culture of the art world than whether than I can draw well enough for you. I’m sorry I don’t have another practice where I make big-assed paintings or delve into the spiritual aspects of life, but that’s because I’m an atheist and believe in that crap we call science. I’m not here to make paintings that make you feel better about your existence on earth. Go to church. I’ll end with one last Howard Halle quote, “Working through an idea that maybe nobody understands except you, until they do understand it.” I’m pretty sure that Howard doesn’t understand the work, not just this drawing, that I’ve been in engaged in. I know Paddy doesn’t it. She’s always asking questions, not providing any attempts at analysis. That’s the problem with being a genius, _no one understands me except me_, and maybe Jade and Jen sometimes, but they usually just think I’m fucking crazy. Awesome. Howard, by your definition, I’m on the right track working for myself. Now, here’s a big assed version of Hooverville (click on it and prepare to scroll) where you can go look for yourself and friends. Just don’t miss the fact that you are pretty much fucked one way or another whether you’re in this drawing or not. That’s the system you have chosen to be participate in like me and Jade. Remember his name, nobody has a fucking clue what he does! That’s a sign of real genius. Have a pleasant evening.