Shaoul + Howe: A Situation
Organized by William Powhida
Jan 21 - March 6, 2022

For installation images, please visit shaoulhowe.com


From January to March of 2022, 601Artspace will undergo a subtle yet radical conceptual transformation, organized by artist William Powhida. The longtime non-commercial space, founded by art collector David Howe, will re-open as commercial gallery Shaoul+Howe, to present Support and Defend, an exhibition of Howe’s work as an artist. Simultaneously, a documentary will be filmed in the space during gallery hours.

As the invited guest curator of Shaoul+Howe: A Situation, Powhida creates an experimental space with new roles for the artist, gallery staff, and invited guests, and a heightened platform on which to perform their labor during the run of the exhibition. Howe’s conceptually-driven work, exploring concepts of power, authority, and autonomy under the extreme conditions found in North Korea, Communist-era Albania, and Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, provides the backdrop for exploring the risks and rewards of presenting this commercial exhibition to the public, and for the scrutiny of a film crew.

As an artist, Powhida is known for institutional critique, and in his hands the extreme discomfort around Howe’s taboo transition from a patron to an artist becomes a means to explore concepts of power, truth, and authority in both the famously opaque art world and society at large. Through the public process of Shaoul+Howe: A Situation, viewers are invited to visit the gallery with less certainty about who or what is real, performed, or possibly coerced during gallery hours. Who’s to tell the difference in a situation where everything depends on perceptions of success?




88 Eldridge St. New York, NY 10002
Tel: 212-243-2735
Open Thurs-Sun 1-6pm 
© 601Artspace, 2018