October 24 - December 20, 2009Opening Reception October 24, 2009 6-9 pm

Charlie James Gallery975 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012

FOREWORD

I like outrage, humor, and truth-telling as much as anyone, especially these days, so I was immediately drawn to Powhida’s work when I first saw it at Pulse NY in March of 2009. The piece I saw was entitled WTF. This work expresses the artist’s outrage at the state of the art world (then in meltdown), and of the then (and still) poisonous political climate casting a pall over the country. The piece is rendered in trademark Powhida style, that of the trompe l’oeil notebook page adorned with text applied using a combination of graphite, colored pencil, and watercolor. The combination of humor, outrage, and first-person truth-telling that I would come to know so well in William’s work I found very exciting in that first encounter. So I reached out to him and to his NY dealers and flew him out for a discovery trip to Los Angeles in May of 2009. I took William on a tour of LA’s must-visit art world venues, not all of which elicited howls of derision from the artist I’m happy to say, and he set about a careful study of the greater culture of Los Angeles and of the specific art world power hierarchies operating in the city. Within a couple of months he was working on pieces for our show in October. Another trip to LA cemented the content for the show and resulted in the production of our show’s video centerpiece, the trailer for the putative Hollywood film Powhida.

One of the most frequently-asked questions I get about William is, “What is this guy like?” Well, the answer to this question may be disappointing to some, as he in no way resembles his Mr. Hyde alter-ego. Where the character is petulant, entitled, and narcissistic, the artist is mild-mannered, humble, and easy to work with.

Powhida has a concentrated fascination with the politics of access and the powers that control the assignment of value in the contemporary art world. 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. Powhida projects his observations, questions, and commentary through the voice of an alter-ego, who 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 character documents his misery and rage against the 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. However, not all of this work exists in the first person. In addition to the alter-ego’s jeremiads, Powhida adds the sycophantic

voice of the press, which is a vital part of the star-making process. Ostensibly a frequent subject of Man About Town profiles in fashion magazines and newspapers, the alter-ego’s more offensive conduct and outsized claims are documented in this way. The result of this play is something like an art world version of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress meets Voltaire’s Candide, as Powhida’s character, through both his blunders and aspirations, reveals an art world shot through with corruption, traps, and snares.

Typical of Powhida’s solo exhibitions, there is a central narrative that weaves the content in the show together. In No One Here Gets Out Alive, Powhida’s character is on the run, depleted from rounds of combat with the New York art establishment and in need of a break. As so many have before him, Powhida sees the wide expanses of Los Angeles as the perfect place to lay low and live high, and when Eli Broad offers to acquire the artist in his entirety and move him to Los Angeles for a protracted period, Powhida happily agrees, and the misadventures begin. Once installed at BCAM on the LACMA campus, Powhida begins by deflating Jeff Koons’s iconic Balloon Dog (Blue), he turns the museum into a lightless Cave and then hires an actor to impersonate himself all over town in a continuous performance piece called Mirror. These key plot-points provide Powhida with the material necessary to examine, celebrate, and deride our fair city of Los Angeles, much to his (and our) shared delight.

This catalogue has been created to memorialize William Powhida’s first solo show in Los Angeles, No One Here Gets Out Alive, which ran from October 24, 2009 thru December 20, 2009 at the Charlie James Gallery in Chinatown. The show was a resounding critical and commercial success, and happily coincided with several key breakthroughs in William’s career that occurred in his hometown of New York City during the run of the show, most notably the New Museum drawing published on the cover of the Brooklyn Rail that set the art world aflame in controversy. This was followed within weeks by a feature profile on Powhida done by the New York Times during the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair in December of 2009.

- Charlie JamesJanuary, 2010

ARTS

Culture MonsterALL THE ArTS, ALL THE TIME........................................................................................................................................Art review: William Powhida at the Charlie James Gallery - November 13, 2009 | 11:15 am

William Powhida has an agenda. Many of them, actually. He wants to be a great artist. He wants to be rich and famous. And he wants to remain an earnest outsider, averse to selling out. You can read what he believes, what he laments and what he desperately craves in the painted lists and letters in his savagely funny show at Charlie James.

Accept capitalism, he advises fellow artists in a litany of strategic sales tips. “Maintain a vague political subtext.” “Lie about your age. Stay thirty.” And if all else fails, “Just sell your soul to Larry” -- ruthlessly enterprising dealer Larry Gagosian, that is.

The Brooklyn-based Powhida is an artist as well as a critic, an irresistible double-dipper and ingenious double-crosser. The chief project of his art is the creation and expression of his own persona, a self-aggrandizing self-doubter, in turns irreverent and sycophantic. Powhida has made himself a character in an ongoing parody of the life of an aspiring artist, and gone even further to conceive of an upcoming biopic whose star remains in character as Powhida for press interviews. A convincing trailer for the purported film plays in the gallery. An equally persuasive painted rendering of a magazine spread on the actor is also on view. Authentic and fabricated blur together, the balance ever shifting. Powhida’s work takes the form of drawing, painting, film and installation, but it is essentially an all-embracing performance, one that sustains pitch-perfect tone throughout.

Powhida spoofs the pretentiously earnest artist’s statement in his own scathingly honest version, his voice oscillating between self-righteous, angry and pathetic. He creates a mock press release announcing the acquisition of the artist in his entirety by the Broad Art Foundation.

The text, wry in both concept and execution, reeks of self-congratulatory artspeak. In a letter to L.A. artists, Powhida offers to trade in his New York art career for a West Coast model. He starts off condescendingly, presumptuously, addressing West Coast wannabes from his coveted East Coast perch, but gradually he drops his cover and begs for a chance to resuscitate his dying career among trees, water, sand and mountains.

His hilarious riffs on the contemporary art world are not just verbal treats. They’re visual gems of trompe l’oeil illusionism. Powhida’s lists, rants and manifestoes look like manically filled sheets torn from spiral-bound notebooks, taped to the wall, but they too are performances, skilled masquerades in graphite, watercolor and colored pencil.

Again, Powhida adopts multiple voices at once: that of the urgent young artist eager to do anything to become the next sensation, and that of the traditional still life painter, meticulously rendering one flat object atop another, in the manner of 19th century greats John Frederick Peto and William Harnett.

However much Powhida the character flails in his anxious ambition, Powhida the maker stays well grounded in art historical tradition. He is a social satirist in the manner of Daumier and Hogarth, up-to-date, up-to-speed, up to some pretty cutting commentary. His work shares a bit of common ground with Jim Torok’s cartoon drawings about the artist’s life, and responds directly to the early text paintings of John Baldessari.

Powhida’s “Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell (New and Unimproved)” takes its basic title from Baldessari’s tongue-in-cheek 1966-68 painting recommending the use of light over dark colors, still lifes free of morbid props and the avoidance of cows and hens as subject matter.

To be a successful artist used to be a matter of answering a powerful inner call -- at least according to romanticized myth. All that romance has long been stripped away by the power of the market, the proliferation of MFA programs and any number of other societal forces.

Now, success depends on a canny marketing formula as much as anything else. Savvy, smart and self-reflexive, a pleasure to look at and a hoot to read, Powhida’s work sells itself with a vengeance. – Leah Ollman

Los AngelesWilliam PowhidaCHARLIE JAMES GALLERY975 Chung King RoadOctober 24–December 23

Insider art-world jokes—as caricature, if not a kind of portraiture—speak volumes about the “contemporary” moment and often end up serving as important social and historical documents as they age. Consider the rich anthology of nineteenth-century Parisian satiric cartoons (those of Honoré Daumier, Henri Meyer, or Paul Iribe), which mock the Salon scene and its establishment. The New York–based artist William Powhida might well be considered today’s Daumier, and this exhibition proves that the art of art-world satire (as a genre? A tradition?) remains a witty and biting form of discourse.

Like many of his past projects, Powhida’s newest works revolve around the fictional character “William Powhida,” a successful enfant terrible artist/idol. Narrated through hand-drawn, trompe l’oeil printed matter—lists seemingly torn from a spiral-bound notebook, glossy magazine spreads seemingly taped to the wall, the six-page layout of an LA Weekly exposé—this show relates the newest chapter in the career of “Powhida”; the artist, having burned his bridges in New York, descends on Los Angeles, getting tangled up with the city’s B-list celebrities, egomaniac art patrons, burger joints, strippers, booze, and materialism. To Powhida, the city and its industries are raw material. His short video Powhida (Trailer), 2009, for example, draws on LA’s cache of professional actors, voice talents, commercial editors, and production studios to plug a fabricated biopic fictionally directed by Steven Soderbergh and produced by “Peres/Saatchi/Boone Pictures.”

While Powhida’s art-world critique is revealing and amusing, what is more noteworthy is the way in which the artist connects that commentary to place. As a site-specific practice, Powhida’s artwork lampoons not only Los Angeles (as it has done with New York, Seattle, and Aspen, Colorado, in the past) but also the position of celebrity, the location of persona, the site of invention, and the gray area of authenticity. And it is through this scrutiny that the artist’s own identity and role within the art world become as much targets as everything else. - Catherine Taft

William Powhida, The Lost Night, 2009, graphite, watercolor, and colored pencil on paper, 30 x 22”.

CrITICS’ PICKS

Artist’s stAtement (no one Here Gets out Alive), 2009GRAphite AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

lA mAkeover CHArt, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR22 X 30 inChes

lA mAkeover CHArt, DetAiL

BroAd Art FoundAtion Press releAse, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

tiPs For Artists WHo WAnt to sell (neW And unimProved), 2009GRAphite AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR30 X 22 inChes

tHe neW Art World, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

deAr lA Artists, 2009GRAphite AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

deAr Art deAlers, 2009GRAphite AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

CHArACter FlAW, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pAneL34 X 42 inChes

CHArACter FlAW, DetAiL

CHArACter FlAW, DetAiL

CHArACter FlAW, DetAiL

CHArACter FlAW, DetAiL

CHArACter FlAW, DetAiL

CHArACter FlAW, DetAiL

HoW to destroy lA, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

tHe lost niGHt, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pApeR30 X 22 inChes

metHod ACt, 2009GRAphite On WAteRCOLOR On pAneL34 X 42 inChes

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

metHod ACt, DetAiL

tHe Blue Period, 2009COLOReD penCiL AnD WAteRCOLOR On pApeR18 X 15 inChes

oPeninG PArty list, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pAneL16 X 12 inChes

revised sHootinG sCHedule, 2009GRAphite, WAteRCOLOR AnD COLOReD penCiL On pAneL22 X 16 inChes

PortrAit oF tHe Artist (suBmerGed), 2009MiXeD MeDiA84 X 62 X 31 inChes

PoWHidA trAiler, 2009eDitiOn Of 1001m 45sec

neW museum, 2009 eDitiOn Of 20 pLus 4 ApsARChivAL DiGitAL pRint17.5 X 14 inChes

tiPs For Artists WHo WAnt to sell (revised And unimProved), 2010 eDitiOn Of 30siLKsCReen30 X 23 inChes

ABmB Hooverville, 2010 eDitiOn Of 13ARChivAL DiGitAL pRint28 X 50 inChes

Education• Hunter College - New York, NY, M.F.A. Painting, January 2002 • Syracuse University - Syracuse, NY, B.F.A. Painting with Honors, May 1998

Selected Solo Exhibitions2009 • No One Here Gets Out Alive, Charlie James Gallery, LA, CA• The Writing Is On The Wall, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY2008 • Sellout: The Bastard Tour, Platform Gallery, Seattle, WA2007 • A Study For Sofia Coppola’s Film ‘Powhida’, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA• This Is A Work Of Fiction..., Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY 2006 • Year_06, Schroeder romero Gallery, London, UK • Paper Beings, Platform Gallery, Seattle, WA • Joint Manifesto, Plus Ultra/Schroeder romero Project Space, NY, NY • Everyone!, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Selected Group Exhibitions2010• magicality, platform Gallery, seattle, WA, organized by William powhida and erik trosko• the irascible Assholes: new Paintings From new york, Gallery poulsen, Copenhagen, Denmark• #class, Winkleman Gallery, new York, organized by Jennifer Dalton and William powhida• two degrees of separation, Mandeville Gallery, union College, schenectady, nY, curated by Rachel seligman• mirrormirror, postmasters, new York• escape from new york, curated by Olympia Lambert, paterson, nJ2009 • Laugh It Off, curated by Jane Scott, Walter Maciel Gallery, LA, CA• Funny Games, Load of Fun Studios, Baltimore, MD• It’s A SchroRo Summer, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY• Summer Solstice, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (Collaboration)• Contemporary Art and Portraiture, Christine Tierney Fine Art Advisory Services, NY,NY• The Making of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany• Beyond Mixed Media, Hunter College Leubsdorf Gallery, NY, NY• I Want You to Want Me, Marx-Zavattero, San Francisco, CA• Note to Self, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY• Pulse New York, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY2008 • Aqua Art Miami, Platform Gallery, Seattle, WA

William Powhida (b. 1976)

• Pulse Miami, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY (Collaboration)• Pulse New York, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY• NADA County Affair, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY (Collaboration)• Caucus, curated by Michael Waugh, Schroeder romero Gallery, NY, NY• Air Kissing, Arcadia University, Philadelphia, PA (traveling)2007 • Air Kissing: Contemporary art about the art world, curated by Sasha Archibald, Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY• Pulse Miami, Schroeder romero Gallery, Miami, FL• Aqua Art Miami, Platform Gallery, Miami, FL• SLOW, Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth, UK • New American Story Art, eyewash@Croxhapox Gallery, Ghent, Belgium 2006 • Word, Platform Gallery, Seattle, WA • Americana, Galeria Arteveintiuno, Madrid, Spain • The Matthew Barney Show, SFBOCA, San Francisco, CA • Pulse Miami, Schroeder romero, Miami, FL • Big Stuff: New Brooklyn Installation Art, Eyewash Gallery, Brooklyn, NY• Pulse New York, Schroeder romero, NY, NY • Aqua Art Miami, Platform Gallery, Miami, FL • Leave New York, Sweet Home Gallery, NY, NY 2005 • Aqua Art Miami, Platform Gallery, Miami, FL • ScopeMiami, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Miami, FL • Wagmag Benefit, Front room Gallery, Brooklyn, NY • Sasquatch Society, sixtyseven Gallery, NY, NY • IAM 5, Parker’s Box, Brooklyn, NY • Momenta Benefit, White Columns Gallery, New York, NY 2004 • Art of the Neighborhood, Tastes Like Chicken Gallery, Brooklyn, NY • Paperwork, Platform Gallery, Seattle, WA • Enchantment, Artspace, New Haven, CT • The Ballot Show, Front room Gallery, Brooklyn, NY • New American Story Art Video & Performance, Eyewash Gallery, Brooklyn, NY • Jamaica Flux: Workspace and Windows, JCAL, Queens, NY • Jumble, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2003 • Dirty Old Toy Box Video Screening, Fluxcore Gallery, Brooklyn, NY • Drawing Conclusions: Work by Artist-Critics, NYArts, New York, NY • All Messed Up With Nowhere To Go, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY2002 • Cooper Union Summer Residency Exhibition, Cooper Union, NY, NY

• Reclamation, MFA Thesis Show, Hunter College Times Square Gallery, NY, NY

Selected Bibliography• Squibb, Steven. “Art, #class Interview with William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton”, Idiom.com, July 13, 2010• Graves, Jen. “Magical Thinking”, The Stranger, July 6, 2010• Falvey, Emily. “All That Glitters Isn’t Gold:Kitsch, Bling-bling, and Bullshit”, ESSE arts + opinions, Spring / Summer, 2010• Butler, Sharon L. “Artists take on the art industry in New York”, Huffingtonpost.com, March 29, 2010• Obom, Stacy. “William Powhida as the reluctant revolutionary”, 20x200.com, March 23, 2010• Cotter, Holland. “Art in review: #class”, The New York Times, March 19, 2010• Maza, Erik. “William Powhida Mocks Art Basel With Huge Drawing, Calls Miami ‘Hooverville’”, Miami New Times, March 17, 2010• Neyfakh, Leon. “The Art World’s Prankster”, The New York Observer, March 16, 2010• Haber, John. “Cutting Class”, Haberarts.com, March 11, 2010• Saltz, Jerry. “William Powhida Is Making Fun of Me and I Love it”, nymag.com, March 9, 2010• “SHOW rEVIEWED: #class at Winkleman Gallery, NYC”, Onereviewamonth.com, February 28, 2010• Diaz, Eva. “Critic’s Picks”, Artforum.com, February 28, 2010• robinson, Walter. “Art Show as Think Tank”, Artnet.com, February 18, 2010• Lindholm, Erin. “The Art of the Crowd”, Artinamericamagazine.com, February 16, 2010• “New Museum Suicide Drawing Can Be Yours”, Artinfo.com, January 15, 2010• Jackson, Candace. “#class Exhibit Challenges New Museum Show”, The Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2010• Davis, Ben. “Ten Stories for 2009”, artnet.com, December 28, 2009• Kaplan, Steven. “William Powhida in A Tale of Three Covers”, post.thing.net, December 26, 2009• Saltz, Jerry. “Unearthed Classics and reinvented Forms: The Best Art of 2009”, nymag.com, December 20, 2009 • Cave, Damien, “William Powhida Tweaks Art World”, The New York Times, Dec 7th, 2009• Goodman, David, “What One Drawing Can Do”, Bomblog, Bombsite.com, Dec 3rd, 2009• Pobegrin, robin “Other Voices on The New Museum Exhibition”, New York Times ArtsBeat blog, November 11th, 2009• Ollman, Leah, “William Powhida at Charlie James Gallery”, The LA Times, Nov 13, 2009• Taft, Catherine, “William Powhida”, Artforum.com Critics Picks Los Angeles Nov, 2009• Wagner, James, “SchroroWinkleFeuerBooneWildenrosenGosian Gallery”, Jameswagner.com, May 14th 2009

• Cotter, Holland, “William Powhida”, The New York Times, May 8th, 2009• Johnson, Paddy, “William Powhida at Schroeder romero”, Art Fag City, April 16th, 2009• “How To Write a Literary Masterpiece”, The Golden Handcuffs review, Spring/Summer 2009 (Publication)• Orden, Erica, “Lastly Play the Odds (But Just for Fun)”, New York Magazine, April 26th, • Egan, Maura, “Members Only: The Artist of the Month Club”, The Moment Blog – NYTimes.com, March 24th, 2009• Peng, Qi “Exclusive Assassination: William Powhida, artist represented by Schroeder romero Gallery”, Salt Lake City Fine Arts Examiner, March 16th, 2009• Wei, Lilly, “William Powhida”, Editions 08: Lower East Side Printshop, 2008• Hackett, regina, “It seems like there’s nothing William Powhida can’t conjure”, Seattle P-I, September 11th, 2008 • Honigman, Ana Finel. “Air Kissing in Philadelphia”, Dazed Digital, April 2nd, 2008• Editorial, “Pulse New York 2008”, Saatchi Online Daily Magazine, March 13th, 2008• Sozanki, Edward, “Art: It’s not a pretty business”, The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 9th. • Joselitt, David, “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, Art Forum, February, 2008• Baker, Kenneth “Mike Henderson’s ‘inner studio’ alive in his paintings”, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 22nd, 2007• “The rules”, Useless Magazine, Issue #6, 2007• Leffingwell, Edward, “William Powhida at Schroeder romero”, Art in America, October

Selected Publications/Criticism2010• Art21.org , “the Conflation of ethics and Morality”, March 18th• hyperallergic.com , “the Best and Worst of the Aughts”, January 11, 20102009• Brooklyn rail Cover, “How The New Museum Committed Suicide With Banality”• Golden Handcuffs review, “How to Write a Literary Masterpiece” 2007 • “The Back of the Line”, collaboration with author Jeff Parker, Decode Inc. Awards/Residencies 2010• Lower East Side Printshop Publishing residency2009• Lower East Side Printshop Mystery Print Artist2008• Visual AIDS Broadside Artist, Visual AIDS, NY, NY2007 • Mystery Print Artist residency, Lower Eastside Printshop, New York, NY2002• Cooper Union Summer Studio residency, New York, NY

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the artist and author, except for brief quotations used in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Design by Leslie Heinz | LPH DesignPhotography by William Powhida and Charlie JamesExhibition Design and Preparation by Dane Johnson

Foreword by Charlie James

Special Thanks:Claressinka Anderson, Artforum, Phong Bui, rachel Cohen, Sarah Cohen,

richard Dacey, Patrick Frank, Emma Gray, ron Handler, Leslie Heinz, Kristen Jensen, Ben Patrick Johnson, Dane Johnson, Greg Karns, Dusica Kirjakovic, Dane Klingaman,

The LA Times, Stephen Lyons, Bob and Ann Myers, Leah Ollman, Craig Platt, Sara Jo romero, Lisa Schroeder, Catherine Taft, Jade Townsend

and everyone involved in the making of Powhida.

CHINATOWN, LOS ANGELESCHARLIE JAMES GALLERY

975 CHUNG KING ROAD LOS ANGELES, CA 90012PH: 213.687.0844 FAX: 213.687.8815

www.cjamesgallery.com