It’s unusual for an artist to almost entirely focus their career on critiquing the contemporary art world and its coterie, but William Powhida does exactly that. Powhida’s illustrated world involves snarky wit, rants, unflattering caricatures and diagrams that break down power and economic structures within art markets, museums and galleries. His current exhibition, Seditions, at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas offers an adequate cross-section of Powhida’s oeuvre with thirteen fairly recent works on paper (most are archival prints of drawings). The exhibition is small yet rich with materials that voice Powhida’s dissatisfaction toward the contemporary art world and its increasingly parallel cultures, like Hollywood and the super wealthy. Ironically, the very people he spanks collect, sell, exhibit and critically applaud Powhida’s works even when he grants them an unflattering cameo. Once an outsider, Powhida’s success is now bolstered by the subjects he loves to hate.

William Powhida, What Has The Art World Taught Me?, 2012; graphite colored pencil and watercolor on paper; 30” x 22”; image courtesy the artist and McKinney Avenue Contemporary.

Opening the show in the MAC’s lobby, Powhida’s Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell (New and Unimproved) (2011), riffs on John Baldessari’s 1966-68 textual work, Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell. The jokes and complaints regarding contemporary art are akin to those that Baldessari offered; however, Powhida updated his instructions with references to the contemporary artist’s increased dependence on powerhouse galleries for monetary success. “Just sell your soul to Larry [Gagosian],” he suggests.

Much of Powhida’s work in the exhibition, including What Has The Art World Taught Me? (2012) and What Can The Art World Teach You (2012), are colorful and painstakingly handwritten lists delineating honest accounts and pitfalls regarding the complicated context surrounding today’s artists: “the originality and complexity of transgression are often trumped by the banal, familiar, repetition of tradition,” and “I’ve learned (slowly and painfully) how to disassociate what people do from who they are so I can occasionally be around them.” Understandably, not much is upbeat. Powhida’s criticism spares no politeness and is a fresh approach to institutional critique, yet seeing several of such lists together weakens their impact. It begins to feel more like a collection of punchy one-liners.

Powhida’s detailed cartoons are stronger. Several appear in the exhibition, such as LA Makeover Chart (2011), New Museum (2012), and ABMB Hooverville (2010). Seen here as a print, Powhida’s drawing, New Museum (originally 2009), was his breakout work after it appeared on the cover of the Brooklyn Rail in 2009. The cartoon called attention to the suspiciously close relations linking much of the New Museum’s exhibition programming to Dakis Jannou’s private collection and the artists represented by Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. Most importantly, New Museum cleverly brought this controversy to the fore and spurred a public dialogue that questioned the appropriateness of such museum-patron-gallery relationships.

The most successful work in Seditions, which is the largest at 28 by 50 inches, is ABMB Hooverville—a print made after a drawing by Powhida and Jade Townsend—that likens the contemporary art fair Art Basel Miami Beach to a “hooverville,” that is, the Great Depression-era shantytowns. The detailed parody includes vignettes picturing lengthy bread lines, shacks, and sleazy caricatures of art celebrities holding forth in front of the fair’s convention center. The top portion of the drawing links footnotes to the characters, which include critic Jerry Saltz surrounded by back-stabbing art bloggers, the artist Terrence Koh crawling around in a fur coat, and curator Shamim Momin acting as a prostitute. Powhida’s illustrated coterie mocks the absurdity of the contemporary art market’s ability to turn a blind eye and trek on despite a severe economic recession. 

As Powhida smartly critiques the various underpinnings, economics and cronyism surrounding contemporary art, the paradox is that much of his work absolutely hinges on insider references for its impact and, thus, comes off as rather elitist itself.  Powhida can only truly reach a rather small audience—the elite art crowd he aims to critique. Yet, as the artist counters on his website: aren’t insider references, be it theory or art history, needed to have a deeper appreciation for most modern and contemporary art? Whether you agree or not, Powhida raises significant questions that are nonetheless welcomed by a world in need of prodding and a voice of dissent.