P·P·O·W is pleased to host a panel discussion featuring Howie Chen, Adam Putnam, and Oscar yi Hou, moderated by curator and writer Eugenie Tsai, in conjunction with Martin Wong: Popeye. The exhibition examines Wong’s lifelong preoccupation with artistic subcultures, such as comic book illustration and early tattoo imagery, and how the artist fused lowbrow pop culture with the highbrow associations of Asian and European art histories as a reoccurring motif. The panelists will contextualize Wong’s Popeye series within the larger cultural and art historical trends of downtown New York in the 1980s and 90s, as well as how their respective artistic and curatorial practices tie back to Wong’s output from this era.
Martin Wong: Popeye is on view at P·P·O·W through May 30, 2026, and is accompanied by a color-illustrated zine featuring essays by the show’s co-curators Mark Dean Johnson and Anneliis Beadnell.
Please join us for this in-person event at 392 Broadway, on Friday, May 15, 4 – 6pm, with extended exhibition hours until 8pm.
Seating will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. RSVP below to confirm your participation.
Howie Chen is the Director and Curator of 80 Washington Square East (80WSE) gallery at NYU. A founding director of Chen’s, a townhouse gallery in Brooklyn, he has held curatorial roles at the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1. He was also a director of Dispatch, a curatorial production office and project space in New York. His writings have been published by Primary Information and Badlands Unlimited and have appeared in magazines such as Artforum, Frieze, and Art in America. Chen is the editor of the anthology Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001 (Primary Information, 2021). In 2024, he was the co-curator of Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001) at 80WSE, featuring over 90 artists and collectives it was the first institutional survey exhibition focusing on artists of Asian descent who were based in New York City. He also co-authors with curator Andrew Lampert HARD TRUTHS, a monthly advice column for Art in America.
Through photography, drawing, sculpture, and film, Adam Putnam (b. 1973) examines the social and aesthetic dimensions of human bodies, often by pushing the physical limits of his own. Wrestling with the body’s relationship to light and space, Putnam engages with live action as a means of investigating the intersection of our physical selves with the architectural spaces we inhabit. Putnam’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Kunstverein Munchen, Munich, Germany; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; and Andrew Kreps, New York, NY, among others. His work has been featured in group exhibitions including Drawing 2020, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY; Rockaway!, MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Paper, Artists Space, New York, NY; Whitney Biennial 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Busan Biennale 2008, Busan, South Korea; 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; and The Plain of Heaven, curated by Peter Eleey, Creative Time & The Highline, New York, NY. In 2009, he curated Everything Must Go, a solo exhibition of works by Martin Wong at P·P·O·W and in 2007, he co-curated Blow Both of Us with Shannon Ebner at Participant Inc. In Summer 2024, his work was featured in P·P·O·W’s group exhibition Airhead.
Eugenie Tsai is a curator and writer based in New York. After sixteen years, she stepped down from her position as Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum (2007-2023). During those years, she shaped the Contemporary collection and organized around forty loan and collection exhibitions. Before assuming her position at the Brooklyn Museum, Eugenie worked at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens as Director of Curatorial Affairs, and at the Whitney Museum in various curatorial roles including Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs. In 2005, she organized a retrospective of Robert Smithson (the subject of her dissertation) for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles that traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum. At the Brooklyn Museum, she organized other monographic exhibitions, including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Kehinde Wiley, KAWS, Oscar yi Hou, and Guadalupe Maravilla, as well as group exhibitions, including Crossing Brooklyn and The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time. Recent exhibitions include the Platform section at The Armory Show (2024), and Imelda Cajipe Endaya at Silverlens Gallery, NYC (2025). Eugenie received a doctorate in Art History from Columbia University and was an early member of the collective, Godzilla: Asian American Art Network.
Oscar yi Hou (b. 1998 in Liverpool, England) received his BA at Columbia University, New York. Solo exhibitions include The beat of life, James Fuentes, New York (2024); East of sun, west of moon, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2022); A sky-licker relation, James Fuentes, New York (2021). Other solo exhibitions include James Fuentes, New York; and Crane Seeking Comforts, T293 Gallery, Rome (2021). Yi Hou has participated in group exhibitions at Pace Gallery, Hong Kong; WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus; Gallery 12.26, Dallas; T293 Gallery, Rome, Italy; Sprüth Magers Online; Asia Society, New York; Tong Art Advisory, New York; Half Gallery, New York; Rachel Uffner, New York; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; and the Royal Academy, UK. His work is in the permanent collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, ICA Miami, New York Historical Society, Columbus Museum of Art, Cantor Arts Center, and M+ Museum. James Fuentes Press published Vol. 6: Oscar yi Hou in 2022.