Wade Guyton

(born Hammond, Indiana in 1972)
Untitled, 2015, signed and dated on the overlap, Epson UltraChrome HDR inkjet print on linen, 213.4 x 175.3 cm
Provenance:
Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
European Corporate Collection (acquired from the above)

Exhibited:
Munich, Das New Yorker Atelier, Brandhorst Museum,
28 January - 30 April 2017, exh. cat. p 211; then: Das New Yorker Atelier, Abridged, Serpentine Gallery, London, 28 September 2017 – 8 February 2018, exh. cat. plate XXXV

Wade Guyton, like Kelley Walker, Seth Price, and Josh Smith, belongs to the new generation of American artists redefining the achievements of Abstract Modernism and Pop Art from the 1960s.

This work belongs to a series in which Guyton produces paintings using an Epson inkjet printer equipped with approximately one hundred individually controlled print heads.
Passing linen canvases through a printer introduces errors that lead to distinctive formal effects. Serendipity is a determining factor in the development process of his Print Paintings. As only a limited surface can be processed by the printer, he folds his canvases in half to alternately print each side. Consequently, a fine vertical stripe remains white in the middle. Wrinkles, scratches, and multiple layers of printing enrich the black surface. These imperfections arise because the linen moves during the printing process and because the same canvas is sometimes passed through the machine multiple times. This results in shifting color tones in the black monochrome. By defining his works as ‘Paintings,’ replacing paint with ink, and the paintbrush with the printer, Guyton raises new fundamental questions about the meaning of painting.
Wade Guyton’s work is unmistakably inspired by the black paintings that Ad Reinhardt created towards the end of his life. This abstract modernist elevates his art to the level of the sublime and the timeless. […]
Simultaneously, the detached working process closely aligns with that of Pop Art artist Andy Warhol. Warhol consistently questioned the physical involvement of the artist and the uniqueness of an artwork with reproduction techniques.

[…] The use of a printer becomes a symbolic act, referencing the ever-increasing shift from manual labor to machine labor in the production process. Technology, art, and economy are thus interwoven in his works.
(From: Wade Guyton, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, 15 March – 31 May 2009)

Wade Guyton is represented by Galerie Chantal Crousel and Matthew Marks Gallery.
His work has been the subject of numerous one-person museum exhibitions including the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2019), the Serpentine Gallery in London (2017), Le Consortium in Dijon (2016), Kunsthalle Zürich (2013), and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2012).
Guyton’s works can also be seen in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and the Dallas Museum of Art.