William Powhida

William Powhida (b. 1976, New York) is a G-E-N-I-U-S and habitual critic of the art world. Powhida lives and works in New York. He studied painting at Syracuse University where he easily received a B.F.A with honors and scored an M.F.A. from the nicely remodeled Hunter College program. He has exhibited internationally in New York, Los Angles, Seattle, London, Madrid, Miami, Chicago, Copenhagen, Austria, Dublin, and even the Canary Islands . Recent shows include Unretrospective at Platform Gallery, Overculture at Postmasters Gallery, and Bill by Bill at Charlie James Gallery, which have left people slightly confused.

He has organized exhibitions including #class and #rank with Jennifer Dalton, Magicality with Eric Trosko, and Dunkle Wolke at StorefrontBK in the dreaded Bushwick. He also collaborated with Jade Townsend on the Lemonade Stand, ABMB Hooverville, Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes, and the recent New New Berlin at the Galveston Artist Residency. His work has been discussed in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Art News, Artinfo, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Art Fag City among others. He has enjoyed and endured residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and Casa Maauad in Mexico City. Currently, he is working on solo show for Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen and researching the subject of artist payments for a drawing project.

Despite all of this, he is probably best known for his horrific drawing “How the New Museum Committed Suicide with Banality” and the equally horrible show POWHIDA at Marlborough Chelsea in 2011. He hopes #class and Ben Davis’s book 9.5 Theses on Art and Class might mitigate some of that damage along with some occasional writing for various blogs and journals. He is also a founding member of Placeholder, a group working towards establishing long-term, rent stabilized studios in New York.

Currently he is represented in New York by Postmasters Gallery, in Seattle by Platform Gallery, in Los Angeles by Charlie James Gallery, and in Copenhagen by Gallery Poulsen. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art.

PORTFOLIO (PDF)
CV (PDF)