Wade Guyton, Untitled (2022), via Matthew Marks
Artist Wade Guyton has long explored the constructs and constraints of contemporary image and object production, utilizing a range of various technological and gestural approaches to create dense, nuanced works that emphasize both the act of making and images they contain. For his latest show, on view this month at Matthew Marks, the artist takes particular interest in his studio as not just the site of production, but the images his work depicts.
Wade Guyon (Installation View), via Matthew Marks
Some of the images in Guyton’s recent paintings include photographs the artist has taken of his studio, wet ink from paintings in process, screenshots of the New York Times homepage, bitmap files, a sixteen-year-old transparency of one of his X paintings, a Manet still life, and a view from his studio window. The studio features throughout, as if the spatial motifs they present creates an interesting dialogue with the show itself. Guyton has brought forward an architectural component here in similar manner. In 2021 je moved into another floor of his studio building that the previous tenant, a clothing company, had filled with metal hanging racks. Rather than remove the racks, he repurposed them to hang his paintings for storage. The result are a series of tunnels and hallways created by the pieces on view, a grid-like arrangement of images that seems apt for Guyton’s often mechanical processes and penchant for borrowed images, recontextualized photos and visual echoes of prior works.
Wade Guyton, Untitled (2021), via Matthew Marks
Wade Guyon (Installation View), via Matthew Marks
In the current exhibition, Guyton has duplicated this set of racks and installed paintings in the same manner. There’s the familiar dual images, swirled and dragged prints, and other hallmarks of Guyton’s practice, but equally there’s a sense of moving spaces that feels particularly resonant, a new fascination with a site and a way to turn the artist’s, and viewer’s eye, towards it.
The show is open through October 28, 2023.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Wade Guyton at Matthew Marks [Exhibition Site]
