Edition Announcement #251 -William Powhida

Why You Should Buy Art by William Powhida
10"x8" ($20) | 14"x11" ($50) | 20"x16" ($200)

Airborne greetings, collectors! I am en route to SF for some meetings, but I will only touch down for the briefest of spells — I need to make it back in time for what is shaping up to be an art-filled marathon of a weekend. I'll kick things off — fresh [sic] from the airport — with the Hey, Hot Shot! opening on Friday evening, which will have all five Hot Shots in attendance. Much as I'd like to paint the town red with them afterward, I'm going to have to conserve my energy for the panels I'm doing over the weekend. You can find me at 11 a.m. on Saturday at The Upside to the Downside: Young Collectors in the Global Market at The Armory, then at SMartCAMP on Sunday. And when not empaneled and pontificating, I'll be joining the 20x200/JBP street team. We'll be fanning out across key art fair locations throughout this metropolis, distributing our amazing Art Fair Survival Kits to those in need. More details to come, but trust me, they're gonna be fan-freaking-tastic.

With all art world eyes on New York, and our efforts focused on the art-for-everyone evangelism we're so fervent about, it seems a most fitting time to introduce today's edition from William Powhida, who's done such a grand job of skewering insider art world machinations that he's in danger of being taken into the fold. After all, Jerry Saltz did single out his recent solo show at Schroeder Romero & Shredder as being "one of the trickiest and most satirically cutting shows of the season," placing William in the #2 spot on his Best Art of 2009 list. His Why You Should Buy Art casts a gimlet eye on the acquisitive aspirations of a certain swath of the collector set, providing a checklist that is a wry medley of fact and fabrication.

The online dialogue that led to our collaboration on this edition — via blogs, Twitter, Facebook and IM — is one much more familiar to me from my web-world endeavors. It was really refreshing to experience that odd we're-meeting-for-the-first-time-but-kinda-know-each-other-already feeling with an art world denizen. For the most part, it seems like the art world is still hovering around the edges of the pool, scared to dive in, in spite of an increasingly louder chorus of "Come on, just JUMP already. Not so with @powhida, whose practice employs his fluency with social media in a way that just makes sense. Of course it takes a lot of time to get to that "just makes sense" stage, which is why I wish everyone else would get on with it. (I'm happy to help! No, really.)

Nowhere is William's way with the web is more evident than #class, an experiment in artworld transparency currently underway at Winkleman Gallery. William calls it:

a 'think-tank' with artist Jennifer Dalton, where we are exploring questions of class and access in relation to the market system... with over fourty participants and the public we will be engaged in creative problem-solving trying to understand an opaque, complex system that can perhaps work better for everyone, not just the wealthy and 'successful' few.

Better for everyone? I like the sound of that.

The deets:
#class
February 21 – March 20, 2010 | Wednesday – Sunday | 4:00 – 7:00 p.m. | 621 West 27th Street

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