Laugh It Off at Walter Maciel Gallery, LA

For Immediate Release

Contact: Walter Maciel

310 839 1840, walter@waltermacielgallery.com

Laugh It Off

Curated by Jane Scott, Girl Wonder, Inc.

11 July – 22 August 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 11^th, 6:00-8:00pm

The New York Times suggests we are living in the “Age of Nice.” It’s a good thing too, with GM bankrupt, Lehman Brothers dissolved and real estate prices tanking, it’s time for a cocktail and a good laugh. Laugh It Off is well timed comic relief guaranteed to take the stress out of your life. Just when you thought you couldn’t take another high brow, I don’t get it, how did he get that in the gallery kind of exhibit, this show is designed with a big “E” for everyone, like family entertainment for those with a wicked sense of humor and maybe even a bit of a dark side.

Take Kammy Roulner, whose agoraphobia shapes her world. Her response is to draw one of her own imaginings, peopled with artists as well as plain folk. She draws in a voice we can all relate to and her anticipated world seems all too familiar. Her take on life, art, even facial hair is so universal, and sarcastically funny, you’ll find yourself nodding in agreement.

Remember the happy face? Well if you do, you’re dating yourself, since it first appeared in 1971 and has barely been out of fashion since. Fletcher Smith, who has borrowed from pop culture icons since his student days at Pratt, has re-purposed smiley to literally make a point. Is this some punishing beach ware or a proposed symbol for the above referenced age of nice? Does the happy face perhaps have a darker side? In any case, it’s nice to know you can still buy happiness, in this installation anyways, by the row.

Laurie Hogin’s work is beautifully painted and chock-a-block full of allegories. Included in the show is an extraction from the piece What Ails Us: 100 Most Commonly Prescribed Pharmaceuticals, depicting perfectly rendered guinea pigs sporting the brand color of the pill each represents. The undertone here is society’s (meaning you and me, pal) excesses have created the need for many of these drugs. Look, you can even see some of the side effects manifest in the little guinea pig faces. Which is your favorite?

William Powhida is perhaps best known for his self-effacing (or is it self serving) rants about the art world, its people and its power. While we tried to reassure him that Market Crash was only a drawing, he was one step ahead of the game already predicting the future with stunning accuracy. He continues to be engrossed in making work from the future while focusing on other attributes that control the art market. With Bill, you draw your own conclusions, or he does it for you?

Oscar Cueto has established a reputation of creating tongue and cheek humor while also commenting on the powers of the universal contemporary art world. Imagine a scenario where famous artists and curators take to the ring and compete for the “World’s Best” title based on physical endurance. Included in the show is a four panel piece from the Superheroes series which portrays international artists Paul McCarthy and Moriko Mori duking it out with the European curator Vasif Kortun and Cueto himself, all dressed in their unique superhero garb. Can you take on these heroes of the art world?

Using his signature felt medium, James Gobel creates paintings that comment on the “bear” culture in the gay community. The show will include an ornate portrait of a bearded gentlemen adorned in a John Deere t-shirt with suspenders resting atop his bulging belly. The figure is cleverly posed on a Victorian bench leaning on a side table and holding a bundle of lit candles. Perhaps he is propositioning some sort of kinky hot wax play or is he simply resting in a comfy pose waiting to wish you a very happy birthday with candles for your cake.

Archie Scott Gobber challenges the notion of language using a formal presentation of painterly notions. The show will feature two paintings, one entitled Paid My Mortgage and the other Gol Dam America which stylistically display a meaningful phrase so that specific letters overlap to be read in different ways. Using the power of language, Gobber asks you to provide authorship through the filter of life experiences, personal beliefs and unique circumstances. Words should not always be taken at face value…or should they?

Remember when you were a kid and your security blanket was your favorite stuffed animal. Robb Putnam’s sculptures are life size versions of these toys made from blankets, shirts, fake fur, rags, plastic garbage bags and leather scraps. The sculptures may stem from playful, whimsical characters, but they take on a new physicality when enlarged to a human scale thus making them precarious in their statute and psychologically vulnerable. No longer cuddly, the monstrous overgrown toys become misfits whose demeanors both invite and repel us. "Mommy, Mommy, my Teddy Bear wants to eat me."

Lezley Saar’s intricate drawings and photo collages visually interpret her observations of her highly autistic teenage daughter. Referencing a Surrealist format, the large scale drawings of fantastical environments are linked together by various stems and roots of imaginative plant life. The networks lead to bubbles of visual information within obsessively patterned borders. The bubbles often function as faces of animated characters attached to limbs, tentacles and tails. Saar’s drawings take us on a nostalgic ride into the mysterious land the same way the innocuous tunnel lead Alice into Wonderland.

All in all, Laugh It Off is the feel good show of summer and who can’t afford a good laugh!

The gallery is located at 2642 S. La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles and is open from Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. Please visit the gallery website at www.waltermacielgallery.com for further information.

The Writing is on the Wall Now Available

I am pleased to announce that the narrative texts from my show, The Writing Is on the Wall, are now available in book format through Blurb.com. The soft cover version is $24.95 and the much nicer hardcover version is $34.95, which I definitely recommend. Some of the original handmade notebook pages are still available and are also available as limited edition prints through Schroeder Romero Gallery.

Now that I have a handle on this self-publishing thing, I will be working on some catalogs of my work that will be available this summer.

Bushwick Don't Worry

It's been a few days since I spent thirteen hours running around Bushwick and I've been thinking about some of the prevailing notions that I heard repeatedly on my slog, my tour through the industrial stretches of the neighborhood. More than one artist sincerely mourned the end of "Bushwick" upon hearing that Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith were spotted touring the BOS and the Bushwick Biennial. At the opening for the Nurture Art leg of the Biennial, another artist I met in Miami bemoaned the end of the non-commercial freedom of Bushwick. Again and again I heard people muttering about "it" being over.

As I rode from studio building to gallery space to studio building, I will only agree that certain things are over in Bushwick. Pocket Utopia is over. Austin Thomas's two-year social art project space presented its Final Utopia and went out with a two-keg bang. Her space, which I only caught the tale end of, was a small, but vital hub in the neighborhood. It will be missed, mainly by the artists who exhibited and mingled there over the last two years and those who came to know it and Austin, who draws people together. She half-jokingly refers to herself as the Mother Theresa of the art world and when we go to openings together, she refers to me as her opposite. So, even as Pocket Utopia closes in Bushwick, I'm certain Austin will emerge elsewhere with new projects and I look forward to more awkward introductions from Austin to dealers like John Connelly.

Overpriced studios should also be over, notably Burr Dodd's criminally overpriced spaces at Brooklyn Fireproof East. Why? I saw a lot of studios for rent/share during my tour (and I see them daily on the Wyckoff Starr community board). The days of the vanity studio or the weekend studio are over. These were the kind of spaces rented by artists a few years out of undergrad or grad school working full-time jobs or raising children who find themselves still putting a check in the mail for a studio they see once a month. Sadly, there's also probably a lot of working artists that simply can't afford the absurd rents that studio landlords were able to charge over the last few years. Renting substandard studios seems to have become a full-time business out there. I can only hope that the practice is over in Bushwick. If you happen to rent at Brooklyn Fireproof; demand lower rent. I'm certain you can find equally comfortable digs anywhere to your liking in the neighborhood.

Apparently, car burning is also over in Bushwick. Artist Eric Trosko lamented the loss of regular explosions on the streets of Bushwick. He explained, as we walked between studios, that when he first moved to the neighborhood, he was treated to nightly explosions of stole cars and a general sense of lawless anarchy. He would smile as he told the stories, I think he genuinely missed the sense of being in a dangerous, marginal place without upscale coffee shops, organic (overpriced) markets, and wine shops. Artist Ken Madore also told Eric and I two amazing stories about being mugged and witnessing a second mugging right in the entryway to his home on Broadway. The muggings involved crackheads, valiant Mexicans, corrupt cops, a pretty white girl from Kansas, dazed witnesses, box cutters, shovels, hammers, bicycles, non-existent watches, and primarily the cultural differences wrought by gentrification. The muggings really weren't about stark class differences, Ken and his roommates are working artists living in a ramshackle building. They are not yuppies in shiny new condos. They were mugged because they were white kids, artists, living in an area that doesn't want them and may resent their presence. While the muggings occured a couple of years ago, Ken's studio/residence is in a densely populated area right near the JMZ stop, which is higher risk than the desolate stretches between Morgan and Jefferson. Ken was inspired to share his mugging stories with us after he heard that Grace Space or Lumenhouse, right down the street, had been visited by five plain clothes cops who inquired about illegal liquor sales. When the galleries indicated that they were not selling liquor the cops said they would be back to check because "they didn't want to see a bunch of drunk white kids get mugged late at night and cause them a headache". While the days of cars burning in the streets are over (for now), there is still plenty of cultural friction in Bushwick between residents and artists.

What really isn't over is Bushwick's freedom from commercialism, commodification, and money. A few short years ago if Jerry and Roberta had toured BOS and written it up in New York Magazine and/or the Times, a small army of town cars would have descended upon the next round of openings for small, yet interesting shows like Fortress To Solitude at 56 Bogart Street curated by Guillermo Creus, ready to assimilate Bushwick right into their collections. Curators and dealers may have also swarmed the open studios looking for artists to keep Chelsea and the art fairs swollen with work. (Un)Fortunately this isn't happening.

Collectors are selling art, not buying it. Galleries are closing and shedding artists, not expanding, and studio buildings are losing artists, not gaining them. Many artists I talked to were clearly worried that their community was under some kind of attack by the commercial art world, and that soon it would be overrun with the kind of hype and expectation that washed out Williamsburg four years ago. I don't think anyone in Bushwick should be worried about "it" being over. You are totally safe to continue working in relatively safety and obscurity.

But behind the desire for an open, experimental, artist-centered community, I also felt really bad for the artists in Bushwick. Despite their protests about the scene being overrun, I thought there was a certain disingenuousness to that sentiment. I've met a lot of artists who dislike and distrust the art market, but they still sell their work. Conversely, I've met very few artists who won't sell their work. I also don't know many artists who don't want to make their work public even if they don't make saleable objects. I can understand artists wanting to keep Bushwick about production, process, performance, and possibilities for exhibition, but it's not a hidden space. I think it's a fallacy to think that it can be an exclusionary community that only includes its own cliques. That's absurd. In the end, I felt sort of terrible for the artists, unknown and emerging, working hard in their Bushwick spaces with the contradictory feelings of resisting the art market that wasn't coming, won't be coming and wanting a break. They seemed to be worried about a fight that has no adversary, or one that no longer exists. So, I'm left with images of artists sitting in their studios pleasantly smiling, talking with people interested in art, and hoping for something that probably won't happen.

It's not hopeless though. There are several gallery spaces and temporary exhibitions are happening with greater frequency. While I am aware that there artists who consciously avoid the market, there are many more artists who are looking for alternatives and better situations. It's the mindset that produced spaces like Pierogi and Parker's Box in Williamsburg (not Roebling Hall or Bellwether). An artist I've met through a show at Momenta, Jason Irwin, has been running Privateer Gallery for a few shows now, and it's spaces like his that will create opportunities for artists.

That said, I got to talk with Benjamin Evans, the director of Nuture Art, who organized the Bushwick Biennial. I was giving him shit about the velvet ropes outside the gallery and its embarrassingly maternal name (like it wants to hug you), when he explained that whole thing was supposed to be a joke on the pervasiveness of Biennials and the importance of scenes in the art world (We were pretty bombed so I'm half-summarizing/half surmising). He assumed that everyone would understand what a joke the concept of Bushwick Biennial was and how it ran counter to its identity as a DIY, independent neighborhood. He was more than a little upset with the superserious way people were taking the BOS and Biennial, and we both agreed that there was an undercurrent of hypocrisy being expressed by artists. It's one that I'm familiar with and accused of all the time; wanting to be critical of the establishment and desiring of acceptance. I've never said that I didn't want to be part of it, I may have said I wanted to destroy it, but I've always been working my in. It's just that I don't stop talking about it, so it's at the art world's risk to allow me further up the ladder. I don't pretend to be better than the art world, I'm part of and product of it, going all the way back to my first classes in undergrad where all the expectations and delusions were born.

I understood Ben's ambivalence about his own curatorial effort and his frustration with the artists, but his is a curatorial perspective. The artists I knew in the various exhibitions were not participating because the notion of the Biennial is a joke, or an anti-Younger Than Jesus. They were showing their work because they believe in it and are seeking recognition, a solo show, a group show, a collector, or any of the reasons artists put themselves on display for the public. I certaintly wouldn't want my work framed broadly as a joke on the rampant commodification of art of the last decade if I wasn't part of it, as many of the artists I met were not. I'm probably not being clear, but I'm trying to point out a friction that exists between how Bushwick is perceived and what people are trying to do there in this post-boom economy. The pressures the artists have been resisting consciously are greatly reduced, just as are the opportunities that existed. The art world is a mess, topsy-turvy and I think people should recognize that fundamental shift. I think Bushwick needs more artist-run exhibitions spaces, not focused on sales (maybe some basic professionalism like set hours) and start showing more art. There isn't much to rail against right now and every reason to work collectively to make vibrant scene that isn't treated like a joke. Why not? You're probably not going to sell anything or make money anyway. We may never see the kind of illusory money that inflated the art world for some time. To make art, people will have to be more creative and probably work a lot harder than we've been used to.

Update: Check out Gina B's comments on the relative "safety" of the Morgan area. It's not immune from crime. Also, thanks to Austin for getting me to revise my terrible spelling. My writing has gotten rusty in the twitter age. And finally, I am working a curatorial project about art and magic, or maybe just our belief in art as magic for a show next summer. I'm open to do studio visits around that project and there are other opportunities on the horizon. I'm also just open to doing studio visits to get out of mine.

The Writing Is On The Wall

Things have been relatively quiet following the end of the show, but I'm back in studio working on a show for Charles James Gallery in LA this October. In the meantime, I'm also preparing to publish a book version of the texts from my show, which will be available in about two weeks online in soft cover and hard cover.

I'll be out and about in Bushwick this weekend and since I moved there last fall, I'm looking forward to seeing the work going in the neighborhood. Definitely will check out The Bushwick Biennial, Pocket Utopia, and Syracuse alum Ken Madore's studio, which is listed on the open studio map. If you have a bicycle, ride out there because the L train is shut down between Lorimer Street and Myrtle Ave this weekend, and every weekend through the end of June. Track work.

Jen Dalton and I are also starting work on Condolensces: Volume 2, which will be made available through Compound Editions.

Contemporary Art and Portraiture

I am pleased to announce my participation in a group show organized around contemporary uses of portraiture by Cristin Tierney Fine Art Advisory Services. I helped install seven paintings along with my video, A Study for Sofia Coppola's Film: Powhida this afternoon in Cristin's new exhibition spaces at 547 West 27th St. The work was originally shown as part of a solo exhibition at Haines Gallery in San Francisco. The show has a great line up including Joe Fig, Sebastiaan Bremmer, Jennifer Dalton, and Danica Phelps. The artists address portraiture from a critical distance. My contributions are portraits of the actors and actresses playing fictional versions of real and imaginary characters. The portraits are accompanied by the 13 minute video. Please join us for the opening on Friday. Despite these dark times, there might even be some cocktails.

CRISTIN TIERNEY FINE ART ADVISORY SERVICES

Presents

Themes and Variations:

On the Use of Repetition in 21st Century Art

an exhibition featuring the work of Joe Fig, Robert Lazzarini, Ryan McGinness, David

Opdyke, Catherine Ross, Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation and Mark Dean Veca

548 West 28th Street, 2nd floor (Tuesday through Saturday, 12-6 pm)

and

Contemporary Art and Portraiture

featuring the work of Melanie Baker, Sebastiaan Bremer, Jennifer Dalton, Joe Fig,

Markus Hansen, Joan Linder, Danica Phelps, William Powhida and Jean Shin

547 West 27th Street, 6th floor (Tuesday through Saturday, 12-6 pm)

May 8th through June 13th, 2009

opening reception Friday, May 8th, from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm

New Publications

In addition to my current show my work has been reproduced in two publications. New York Magazine gamely ran Post-Boom Odds drawing produced for Ben Tischer as part of the Artist of the Month Club. The drawing was subjected to the scrutiny of anonymous art world insiders who weighed in on my predictions. It's in this week's issue in the Opportunists Guide section. You can check it out at http://bitly.com/IqYc9 where you can offer your own predicitons, but probably not without identifying yourself in some manner.

Also, Golden Handcuffs Review, a journal of literary satire, published by Lou Rowan will be debuting soon and copies are available now at Schroeder Romero. The project was initially a longer piece of fiction that I whittled down to a six page list with an introduction and epilogue after Lou asked me to contribute following my show in Seattle last fall.

Commenting Machine

In 1993, Tim Hawkinson created his Signature Chair, a machine that churns out his signature questioning the nature of artistic identity and consciousness. In 2009, I present Commenting Machine, an art work which induces anonymous people to assume the identity of William Powhida and post comments in the artist's voice. I'm not sure it was harder to produce than Hawkinson's peice, at least technically, but it's taken years of annoying and shallow art to create the right conditions for Commenting Machine to come into existence.

William said...

You know Anon, I think you've really made me think. Maybe you helped me verbalize all my doubts. You really helped me move on. I am so glad you gave me all the attention. I just wish it was more positive. But hey, it's better then being ignored. I hope to have a new idea for some Art soon (note the capital A!).
Your Friend,
William.

Commenting Machine Number 1
Anonymous blogger, http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/2009/04/post-opening-malaise.html, previous work, hate
Dimensions unknown
2009
unlimited edition

William said...

Yes!!! I've won (ok, maybe I've just won the battle, not the war, I'm sure you'll defeat me at some point). I knew you'd try and use this all for your own work - it's just the type of Wanna be Sean Landers Cliche you'd pull, but the irony is your just posting my comments over and over for me and it's still not art!!! Yeah!! I love you willy. Thanks for getting me that show at Schroder and Romero. I look forward to seeing some drawings of my comments really soon. The thought of you spending time studying my blabber in order to render a silly drawing is amazing. Don't know if I'm willing to show in Seattle yet. I'm not down with no regional art scene. I had no idea they they are your primary dealers. Are you to good for 27th Street?
xoxo
William.

April 22, 2009 1:32 PM

Commenting Machine Number 2
Anonymous blogger, http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/2009/04/commenting-machine.html, previous work, hate
Dimensions unknown
2009
unlimited edition

William said...

Fine, you got me. I'm William Powhida.

April 23, 2009 7:05 PM

Commenting Machine Number 3
Anonymous blogger, http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/2009/04/commenting-machine.html, previous work, hate
Dimensions unknown
2009
unlimited edition

william said...

I am xoxo William and I didn't write all these comments. Someone is ripping me off. WTF. Who is William #3? I'd like to invite you to the Hamptons for the William fan club tonight. All the artfag city peeps are coming. Mark Kostabi and Patrick Mimram are coming to.
xoxo
william

April 24, 2009 7:42 AM

Commenting Machine Number 4
Anonymous blogger, http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/2009/04/commenting-machine.html, previous work, hate
Dimensions unknown
2009
unlimited edition

william said...

I haven't died. I just need more fuel to move forward. Feels too much like masturbation to keep going by myself. Give me something good Willy and I'll give you plenty more to make your art with. Otherwise, you may force me into remission through boredom. I'll come back out when you start repeating yourself with some bad art and childish reads of contemporary theory. Or maybe I won't care enough to keep posting? But then if I don't play, it'd just be you and your crappy dealers sitting in your own feces (plus Eddy and Remsen). So sad.

April 29, 2009 6:48 PM

Commenting Machine Number 5
Anonymous blogger, http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/2009/04/commenting-machine.html, previous work, hate
Dimensions unknown
2009
unlimited edition

This is about the work

From Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives:

There are books for when you're bored.  Plenty of them.  There are books for when you're calm.  The best kind, in my opinion.  There are also books for when you're sad.  And there are books for when you're happy.  There are books for when you're thirsty for knowledge.  And there are books for when you're desperate.  The latter are the kind of books Ulises Lima and Belano wanted to write.  A serious mistake, as we'll soon see.  Let's take, for example, an average reader, a cool-headed, mature, educated man leading a more or less healthy life.  A man who buys books and literary magazines.  So there you have him.  This man can read things that are written for when you're calm, but he can also read any other kind of book with a critical eye, dispassionately, without absurd or regrettable complicity.  That's how I see it. I hope I'm not offending anyone.  Now let's take the desperate reader, who is presumably the audience for the literature of desperation.  What do we see?  First: the reader is an adolescent or an immature adult, insecure, all nerves.  He's the kind of fucking idiot (pardon my language) who committed suicide after reading Werther.   Second: he's a limited reader.  Why limited?  That's easy: because he can only read the literature of desperation, or books for the desperate, which amounts to the same thing, the kind of person or freak who's unable to read all the way through In Search of Lost Time, for example, or The Magic Mountain (a paradigm of calm, serene, complete literature, in my humble opinion), or for that matter, Les Miserables or War and Peace.  Am I making myself clear? Good.  So I talked to them, warned them, alerted them to the dangers they were facing.  It was like talking to a wall.  Furthermore: desperate readers are like the California gold mines.  Sooner or later they're exhausted! Why?  It's obvious!  One can't live one's whole life in desperation.  In the end the body rebels, the pain becomes unbearable, lucidity gushes out in great cold spurts.  The desperate reader (and especially the desperate poetry reader, who is insufferable, believe me) ends up by turning away from books.  Inevitably he ends up becoming just plain desperate.  Or he's cured! And then, as part of the regenerative process, he returns slowly - as if wrapped in swaddling cloths, as if under a rain of dissolved sedatives - he returns, as I was saying, to a literature written for cool, serene readers, with their heads set firmly on their shoulders.  This is what's called (by me, if nobody else) the passage from adolescence to adulthood.  And by that I don't mean that once someone has become a cool-headed reader he no longer reads books written for desperate readers.  Of course he reads them!  Especially if they're good or decent or recommended by a friend.  But ultimately, they bore him! Ultimately, the literature of resentment, full of sharp instruments and lynched messiahs, doesn't pierce his heart the way a calm page, a carefully thought-out page, a technically perfect page does.  I told them so.  I warned them.  I showed them the technically perfect page.  I alerted them to the dangers.  Don't exhaust the vein!  Humility! Seek oneself, lose oneself in strange lands! But with a guiding line, with bread crumbs or white pebbles!  And yet I was driven mad, driven mad by them, by my daughters, by Laura Damian, and so they didn't listen.

From Michelle Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island

I don't mean that my sketches were unfunny; they were funny.  I was, indeed, a cutting observer of contemporary reality; it was just that everything seemed so elementary to me, it seemed that so few things remained that could be observed in contemporary reality: we had simplified and pruned so much, broken so many barriers, taboos, misplaced hopes, and false aspirations; truly, there was so little left.  On the social level, there were the rich and the poor, with a few fragile links between them - the social ladder, a subject on which it was the done thing to joke; and the more serious possibility of being ruined.  On the sexual level there were those who aroused desire, and those who did not: a tiny mechanism, with a few complications of modality (homosexuality, etc.) that could nevertheless be easily summarized as vanity and narcissistic competition, which had already been well described by the French moralists three centuries before.  There were also, of course, the honest folk, whose who work, who ensure the effective production of wealth, also those who make sacrifices for their children-in a manner that is rather comic or, if you like, pathetic (but I was, above all, a comedian); those who have neither beauty in their youth, nor ambition later, nor riches ever but who hold on wholeheartedly, and more sincerely than anyone, to the values of beauty, youth, wealth, ambition, and sex; those who, in some kind way, make the sauce bind.  Those people, I am afraid to say, could not constitute a subject.  I did, however, include a few of them in my sketches to give diversity, and the reality effect; but I began all the same to get seriously tired.  What's worse is that I was considered to be a humanist; a pretty abrasive humanist, but a humanist all the same.

Post-Opening Malaise

Wow, thanks to everyone who made it out last night for the opening of my second solo show with Schroeder Romero.  The reception was amazing, and watching people pour over my painting, "Relational Wall" was a blast.  I'm humbled by the intense reactions people had with the show, and it was wonderful to hear feedback from real people with names and faces.  My anonymous hater really doesn't have a clue what it's like to produce this work and the level of identification people have with it.  While it's one thing to toss anonymous stones at me, I prefer to heave cinder blocks into the system with my name scrawled across them.  Ed Winkleman and Paige West continue to be huge supporters of my work, and in particular their ability to see it in the broader context of the art world.   Ed continues to admire Dana Schutz's paintings which have never really been part of the critique.  I've just been fascinated with the way painting continues to re-invent itself as the standard bearer of contemporary art despite the continuous critical and theoretical assault on Modernism and traditional aesthetics.  With Schutz it's also the way her work skyrocketed in value, even as her most recent show looks markedly like someone trying to develop a new language.  I don't envy the pressure to continue to produce half-million dollar paintings and find room to grow.  While I continue to deal with similar themes in my new show as the last one two years ago, there are different modes of representation from the "Relational Wall" to my narrative series "Withdrawal" that continue to explore new aspects of narrative in art.  Plus, I never expected to have as much success as I've had, so I'm always a little surprised to continue to have opportunities to exhibit and explore the ways in which we construct value in the art world.  Last night was something of a balm for the self-doubt I always feel about getting specific with my work.  Thanks to Thomas, Tom, Josh, Jen, Max, Lisa, Sara Jo, Jade, and Bill for helping me get the show together at various points along the way.  

The Writing is on the Wall

My second solo show with Schroeder Romero opens this Friday from 6 - 8 pm at the gallery located at 637 W 27th Street. Actually it opens April 10th 2010, but art can time travel. SchroRoWinkleFeuerBooneRosenGosian Gallery will also be opening in their new gallery space in the year 2012 offering unlimited non-archival ink jet prints of several of their prominent (surviving) artists for $500,000 ($20 2009) dollars.

Gallery Press Release

WE ARE GOING GREEN!
To receive future exhibition announcements, please email lisa@schroederromero.com and/or sarajo@schroederromero.com

SCHROEDER ROMERO
637 WEST 27TH STREET GROUND FLOOR NEW YORK, NY 10001
(212) 630-0722 www.schroederromero.com
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WILLIAM POWHIDA
The Writing is on the Wall

April 10 - May 16, 2009; Opening Reception: Friday, April 10, 6-8pm

Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s back and up to his crazy shit again. William Powhida has once again put us in a totally awkward position as his dealers. He is asking us to show a body of work that he claims was produced by William Powhida sometime in late 2009. We realize it is only April. What the fuck? Right? We aren’t even really sure we understand him, but William claims to have William’s reflections from his time locked in Thai jail for solicitation and drug charges while abroad on an NEA funded travel grant. Apparently (this is so weird) William underwent a difficult detoxification and documented it on paper. We are not shitting you. William even produced a NY Post cover and article verifying the events that haven’t even happened yet, which is just plainly ridiculous.

William has really gone bat shit crazy, making some sort of paranoid representation of the art world William produced after being freed from jail, and has expanded it into an installation of over 3,000 art world portraits. We tried to explain to him that it’s just not possible to show art from the future, but our special ‘little art star’ just stared at us. Are we missing something??? No, he’s obviously experiencing some kind of meltdown brought on by the economic collapse. We think he’s certain he might have had something to do with it and we tried to explain it wasn’t all his fault. Market Crash was just a drawing.

Unfortunately, we are, um, committed to the show based on what he told us he was going to do. He said something about a memoir and was vague about the details. UH, NO. We promise this is the LAST time we trust him. We are so embarrassed to have to do this, but we have to announce that we are pleased to present ‘The Writing Is on the Wall’ opening April 10, 2010 from 6–8pm opening this April 10, 2009 from 6–8pm. This is just absurd, but that is when he says the opening takes place and you know how ‘geniuses’ operate, totally weird, probably insane.

To make matters worse, William also collaborated on a project with Jennifer Dalton. They swear they received a fax time-stamped April 2012 from SchroRoWinkleFeuerBooneWildenRosenGosian Gallery regarding the opening of the last gallery in New York featuring unlimited editions of their work (and every artist still in New York). It’s really…we are at a loss for words. We are so mad at ourselves and Ed Winkleman for even suggesting they collaborate. The artists have provided us with the SRWFBWRG press release. It is a mortifying vision of our future. Please don’t be mad at us, we will show really serious art again soon. If only all of our artists were as thoughtful as Michael Waugh and Eric Heist we wouldn’t be in this position. So, for our sake, please come out and support us during this difficult time and just entertain Powhida, he is really fragile right now and we are just trying to be good art dealers.

- Lisa Schroeder and Sara Jo Romero