Wade Guyton

Lot Description Wade Guyton (b. 1972) Untitled initialed and dated 'WG 2010' (on the overlap) Epson Ultrachrome Inkjet on canvas 84 x 69 in. (213.3 x 175.2 cm.) Executed in 2010. Provenance Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne Modern Collections, London Acquired from the above by the present owner Pre-Lot Text PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED EUROPEAN COLLECTION View Lot Notes > '[Wade Guyton] is one of the first and most important artists of his generation to have been formed through the postmodern practice of appropriation and for whom abstraction has always existed, above all, as a reproduced image' (V. Pcoil, 'The American Action Painter,' La Salle de Bains, 2006). Wade Guyton's diaphanous black and white veils use modern technology to rewrite the conventions of painting. Using some of the largest industrial ink-jet printers available, Guyton produces his enigmatic works by feeding wide stretches of raw canvases through the printer and watching the composition take shape. In the process Guyton challenges the conventional nature of art whilst celebrating the fallibility of modern technology. Constantly blurring the line between the artist's intent and technological will, Guyton's monochromatic paintings document the process of their own creation. With its skips, skids, stutters and smears, the possibilities of Guyton's inkjet medium generate tension in the painting as well as a subtle, disjunctive play that endows his work with vitality and keeps its viewer engaged. "You tap a keyboard with one finger and this very large painting emerges. It's gone against everything we think of as a painting," states curator Ann Temkin. "There are so many historical landmarks that precede him, so many artists who took the traditional notion of painting in a new direction," Temkin goes on to clarify. "Pollock flung it; Rauschenberg silkscreened it; Richter took a squeegee; Polke used chemicals. Wade is working in what by now is a pretty venerable tradition, against the conventional idea of painting" (A. Temkin quoted in, R. Smith, 'Dots, Stripes, Scans: Wade Guyton at the Whitney Museum of American Art,' New York Times, 4 October 2012).

Wade Guyton (b. 1972) Untitled signed and dated 'Wade Guyton 2009' (on the overlap) Epson Ultrachrome inkjet on linen 84 x 69in. (213.4 x 175.5cm.) Executed in 2009 Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009. IMAGINATION BECOMES REALITY A SELECTION OF WORKS FROM THE GOETZ COLLECTION SOLD TO BENEFIT CHARITY PROJECTS 'I've become interested in when something starts as an accident and then becomes a template for other things, or reproduces itself and generates its own logic until something else intervenes to change it' (W. Guyton, quoted in S. Rothkopf, 'Modern Pictures', Color, Power & Style, exh. cat., Der Kunstverein, Hamburg, 2006). Comprised of delicate striations of diaphanous grey pigment, Wade Guyton's Untitled challenges the pre-conceived notions of the limits of abstraction by employing the formal structure and appearance of Modernist painting through contemporary technology. Perpetually blurring the line between the artist's intent and technological will, Guyton's monochromatic paintings document the process of their own creation, stress the inane fallibility of machines, and provide a semblance of the pictorial incident and life. As Guyton recently said of these works, 'the works on linen are a record of their own making which at times can include accidents in the printing or in the physical act of making them, like when I drag a canvas across a studio floor' (W. Guyton, quoted in C. Vogel, 'Painting, Rebooted', in The New York Times, 27 September 2012). In its documentation of the skips, skids, stutters and smears that inadvertently occur during the printing process, Guyton's inkjet medium paradoxically betrays a singularity or individuality in the face of mechanisation that encourages viewer engagement. The gradual unloading of ink by the printer's carriage creates a variegated effect, appearing to capture a moment of stasis. Guyton first began experimenting with printing on linen in 2006. The present work was created by physically pulling the vast swathe of linen fabric through an ink-jet printer. Working on a larger scale than his technology would allow, Guyton folded the linen, executing the computer file on one side and then the other; the resulting image has a bisecting line that simultaneously unites the mimetic bands on either side and fractures the work. The slate-grey horizontal bands create a hypnotic effect, encouraging the eye to skip down the entire vertiginous length of the composition. Reminiscent of the scanning of a photocopying machine, Untitled is fractured by a thin glowing vertical line. With its impenetrable central vertical seam and its fine horizontal lines multiplied down the length of the linen, Untitled sparks allusions from the history of twentieth century Abstraction-from Kazimir Malevich's black on black, to the 'zip' of a Barnett Newman, to the restrained linear coordinates of Agnes Martin's spiritual Minimalism. Guyton has simultaneously considered the monochrome paintings of the 1960s by artists such as Brice Marden and Robert Mangold, while also allowing his works to take on the more unexpected markings of fugitive lines or unintentional ink drips from his machine, thus registering the work's very facture. Of his practice Guyton notes, 'this is a recording process as much as a production process. And I have to live with it, smears and all' (W. Guyton, quoted in C. Vogel, 'Painting, Rebooted', in The New York Times, 27 September 2012).

Lot Description Wade Guyton (b. 1972) Untitled Epson UltraChrome inkjet on canvas 60 x 37 in. (153 x 94 cm.) Executed in 2005. Provenance Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich View Lot Notes › Three Works by Wade Guyton "I've become interested in when something starts as an accident and then becomes a template for other things, or reproduces itself and generates its own logic until something else intervenes to change it" (W. Guyton, quoted in S. Rothkopf, 'Modern Pictures,' Color, Power & Style, exh. cat., Kunstverein, Hamburg, 2006). Executed in 2005, the following three works are early examples of Wade Guyton's diverse artistic practice. Drawing from the silkscreens of Andy Warhol and the text-based paintings of Christopher Wool, Guyton's oeuvre represents the culmination of this tradition of image reproduction, transposing the methods of these twentieth century artists into the digital age. Wade Guyton is currently the subject of a mid-career survey exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art titled Wade Guyton OS, the OS standing for operating system, the software that supports a computer's essential user functions. Discussing the role of computers and technology in Guyton's art Ann Temkin has remarked, 'You tap a keyboard with one finger and this very large painting emerges. It's gone against everything we think of as a painting.' Temkin went on to clarify, 'there are so many historical landmarks that precede him, so many artists who took the traditional notion of painting in a new direction. Pollock flung it; Rauschenberg silkscreened it; Richter took a squeegee; Polke used chemicals. Wade is working in what by now is a pretty venerable tradition, against the conventional idea of painting' (A. Temkin, quoted in R. Smith, 'Dots, Stripes, Scans: Wade Guyton at Whitney Museum of American Art,' New York Times, 4 October 2012). Combining three elements of Guyton's artistic vocabulary--the orb, the 'X' and his signature red and green stripes-the present Untitled painting exudes a quiet poetry even though it has been created using a computer, scanner and printer. The red and green stripes covering the lower part of the canvas recall the work of Daniel Buren and Frank Stella, as well as festive wrapping paper. These alternating stripes first caught Guyton's attention when he noticed their pattern on the inside cover of printed paperback books and immediately tore out the page to scan it. Discussing this combination the artist has explained, 'They are weird Christmas colors yet there's an optical buzz to it. It's interesting for me to take something so insignificant and minor and affectless on its own and let it permeate in many different ways' (W. Guyton, quoted in C. Vogel, 'Painting, Rebooted,' New York Times, 27 September 2012). The black orb floating in the blank expanse evokes the abstract painting of Kazimir Malevich, Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt, although Guyton diverges from his fellow artists by utilizing a technological process to lend painterly qualities to his work. Untitled also incorporates Guyton's 'X' motif, a theme which first appeared in his drawings in which this letter was printed liberally over pages from art historical texts, which had themselves been overprinted with images of canonical masterpieces. This procedure served to highlight the significance of the reproduced image in contemporary society.

6 WADE GUYTON Untitled , 2009 Epson Ultrachrome inkjet on linen 118.8 x 86.4 cm (46 3/4 x 34 in) Signed and dated ‘Wade Guyton 09’’ on the overlap. ESTIMATE £100,000 - 150,000 † PROVENANCE Private Collection, London Contact Specialist Request Condtion Report Recieve Email alerts “Recently I‘ve been using Epson inkjet printers and flatbed scanners as tools to make works that act like drawings, paintings, even sculptures. The resulting images aren’’t exactly what the machines are designed for – slick digital photographs. There... Read More... View catalogue Purchase catalogue Annual subscriptions

Wade Guyton (b. 1972) Untitled signed and dated 'Wade Guyton 2012' (on the overlap), dedicated 'For Kunsthalle Zürich' (on the stretcher) Epson ultrachrome inkjet on linen 84 x 69in. (213.4 x 175.3cm.) Executed in 2012 Donated by the artist. "This painting comes from a series of "unfinished" works. The black TIFF was sent to print and stopped seconds later." Wade Guyton