Wade Guyton

The Tomato Lovers

2006

A rising figure in the contemporary art world, Wade Guyton uses accessible technology to create paintings, drawings, and sculptures that address his viewer’s evolving relationship to the digital and the ways in which mechanized images become physical works. Using inkjet printers, scanners, and desktop computer programs, Guyton channels the eccentricities of these contemporary mediums onto canvas or paper. Imperfections from the printing process emerge as the artist feeds canvas through a printer several times, or toner levels contribute streaks to the composition—these digital processes manifest painterly qualities spontaneously. Flames, stripes, X’s, and U’s are common motifs in his work, which remain painterly despite their automated generation. Although his pieces appear Minimalist and mechanical, their interpretation relies upon the intersection between the artist’s hand and mechanical creation. Guyton\\Walker—a collaboration between Guyton and Kelly Walker—similarly addresses repetition and the way in which digital reproduction alters appropriation and collaboration. Guyton has exhibited at various international institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, Kunsthalle Zürich, Austria, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, National Gallery, Warsaw, and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, among many others. He participated in the 2013 Carnegie International, the 2013 and 2009 Venice Biennale, The 2007 Lyon Biennale, and The 2004 Whitney Biennial. In 2014, Guyton received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art.