Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2008. Epson UltraChrome inkjet on linen.

Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2006. Inkjet on canvas.

An old saying goes:

If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . .  well then . . .  it might just be a DUCK.

Today, we live in a postmedium age. A hybrid age. There are no more easy categories or rote definitions to live up to. Perhaps more than ever before, we are confronted by very strange, hybrid works of art. Works of unidentifiable mediums. And we do not know what to call them.

Many artworks nowadays look, act and feel like paintings, and are  certainly easily mistaken for such, even very close up. But they are technically not paintings at all.

Case in point is the work of artist Wade Guyton. His ‘paintings’ are in fact prints on linen canvas, made with an Epson printer.

The accidents and mishaps that occur in his printer, as he folds, drags, squashes and intentionally jams the canvas through the printer result in a fascinating series of mis-registrations, streaks, and degradations of chance and accident.

It is not Guyton – but rather his machine – that causes these pattern overruns, glitches and aberrations that repeat throughout his canvas. In true Warholian tradition, Guyton claims he is similarly too “lazy” to actually paint, much as Warhol once claimed he too would rather be a machine.

Installation of Wade Guyton’s ‘OS’ at The Whitney Museum of Art, October 2012 – January 2013.

WORDS BY:  John D’Agostino

Wade Guyton, Untitled,
2008. Epson UltraChrome inkjet on linen.

It is high time to call for a re-framing of just what painting is in the 21st century, and what is really all about. Painting is not about paint. Let me say that again: painting is not about paint, nor does it have to be made with paint.

Whether or not a painting is actually made with paint is perhaps the least interesting thing about it. And artists have been painting without paint for centuries now, from Francesco di Giorgio’s Studiolo from the Ducal Palace at The Metropolitan Museum (using shades of wood) to Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Favrile glass, which is perhaps the ultimate examplar, because the few sections of his stained glass windows that are actually painted over (such as faces or hands) are much less effective compared to the flowing use of layers of glass to suggest everything else.

I hope we can now move past these exhausted ideologies and old world categories. As professor Lance Winn and others have called for, it is time to discuss what Mr. Guyton’s paintings actually mean, and whether their study and reflection is worthwhile or not. As Marshall McLuhan once likened, as one medium becomes re-mediated and hybridized into the next, sometimes the new medium may actually fulfill the promises of the old.

Wade Guyton is represented by Petzel Gallery in NY and Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris. Wade Guyton OS exhibited at The Whitney Museum in January 2013.

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Re/Mix! Innovators, Appropriators & Copyright Criminals A New Course by John D’Agostino
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Cornell Remixes Bronzino: Joseph Cornell, Medici Princess, 1952-54,  Angelo Bronzino, Portrait of Medici Girl, 1542.			Oft-times an overlooked & misunderstood tradition, the art of sampling historical source material into new works of art and music is a rewarding, sophisticated and ingenious practice rife with departures, ruptures & contradictory possibilities.
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Joseph Cornell, Medici Boy, 1943. Wood box construction using elements from Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy, ca. 1500.			Raw material for artists to re-combine can be found literally anywhere, from archaic media, vinyl records, and trash, to photographs or finished works like painting. Challenging, subverting, co-opting, even re-inventing mediums, the Re-Mix in assemblage art, collage, Hip Hop music, photography and more is a tour de force of creative practice in the 21st century, encompassing an entire spectrum of originality (or lack thereof), from one-dimensional Appropriators, to Hackers, cover artists and mashups, to entirely new, emergent digital artforms.Featured artists include: Joseph Cornell, Romare Bearden, Yves Klein, Vik Muniz, Thomas Ruff, John Stezaker, Louis Comfort Tiffany, E.J. Bellocq, Dr. Lakra, Idris Khan, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg, Wangechi Mutu, Marcel Duchamp and Kehinde Wiley, among many others.
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			Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962. Acrylic on canvas, using an original publicity still of Marilyn Monroe from the film Niagara, 1953.
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Louis Comfort Tiffany, At the New Circus, ca. 1894. Favrile stained glass, using Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s watercolor At the Nouveau Cirque, 1892.			Re/Mix! will employ the art of sample-based Hip Hop as the quintessential paradigm for the visual artist. From the very first DJ’s of the South Bronx employing turntables and a mixer, sampling in Hip Hop music is the foundation of the genre. Much like their visual counterparts, its most innovative practitioners exemplify a selective, three-dimensional and highly sophisticated synthesis of old material into new, from producers like Prince Paul, DJ Premier and Da Beatminerz, to acts like De La Soul or Beastie Boys, to those that sample their own sounds, such as Portishead.
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Enrique Gomez de Molina, Rhinoplasty, 2010. Hybrid taxidermy sculpture, using jewel beetle wings, peacock feathers and buffalo horn.         John Stezaker, He II, 2008. Photo collage, using old film portraits.			Course Schedule Week 1: The Innovators Featured Artists: Joseph Cornell · Andy Warhol · Romare Bearden · Kurt Schwitters · Yves Klein · Laszlo Moholy-Nagy · Louis Comfort Tiffany · John Stezaker   Week 2: The Appropriators Featured Artists: Roy Lichtenstein · Marcel Broodthaers ·Sherrie Levine · Claes Oldenburg · Cindy Sherman · Vik Muniz · Jeff Koons · Banksy   Week 3: Copyright Criminals Featured Artists: Danger Mouse · Shepard Fairey · Da Beatminerz · Richard Prince ·Prince Paul · Hank Willis Thomas · Beastie Boys · Cory Arcangel   Week 4: The Bricoleurs Featured Artists: Jacques de La Villegle · Max Ernst · Wangechi Mutu · Conrad Marca-Relli · Robert Rauschenberg · Robert Heinecken · Marcel Duchamp · Dr. Lakra   Week 5: The Hackers Featured Artists: Alvin Langdon Coburn · Thomas Ruff · Adam Fuss · Walead Beshty · Lucas Samaras · Wade Guyton ·  Marco Breuer
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This course is currently in development for venues TBA 2013. For more information, please contact John D’Agostino.

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