Zeichnungen für ein großes Bild, Pages 55-56, 2010 by Wade Guyton

Wade Guyton
Zeichnungen für ein großes Bild, Pages 55-56, 2010
Digital C-print in aluminum black matte powder-coated frame
44½″ × 63¼″ × 2″
Edition 1 of 15, with 2 AP

For more information, please write to zack@canopycanopycanopy.com.

The artist’s studio has long held a near-mythic place in art history. It’s the site of creation and production, where countless conditions determine the final work of art: air quality, noise pollution, studio size, angles of light, and so on. In Wade Guyton’s work, his New York studio—and its floor, in particular—plays an outsized role in how his paintings are produced. Known for his works on linen produced with a massive inkjet printer, Guyton often tugs and drags the material across the floor of his studio to manipulate the final print, collapsing the distinction between mechanical reproduction and painterly gesture.

Guyton brings this approach to Zeichnungen für ein großes Bild, Pages 55-56 (2010), which translates to "drawings for a large picture," from a series of images depicting a stack of pages ripped from art books, some transformed into Guyton's printer drawings. The pile of book pages are photographed on the cobalt blue floor of the artist’s studio. A black-and-white reproduction of Francisco Goya’s A Butcher’s Counter (c. 1808–1812) sits atop the pile. Next to the stack, the leg of a tripod, a wire, and the bright white reflection of the camera’s flash expose the apparatus of the work’s own making—as well as the physical and conceptual foundations of Guyton’s practice. 

Wade Guyton’s practice, which spans painting, sculpture, installation, and publication, turns procedural constraints into aesthetic strategies that trouble the boundaries between reproduction and original. In the mid-2000s, Guyton gained recognition for paintings created by forcing canvas through commercial inkjet printers.  His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Serpentine Gallery, London; Le Consortium, Dijon; Kunsthalle Zürich; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Tate Modern, London.