Wade Guyton's dislike of drawing prompted him to turn to the digital, using his computer, scanner, and printer to experiment on old art and design books, beginning in 2002. Despite this novel technique, Guyton terms his artworks as 'paintings'. In critic Peter Schjeldahl's review of the 2012 Wade Guyton OS survey exhibition, he notes that Guyton's works 'evoke the noble rawness of a Pollock or a Rothko.'
Read MoreGuyton's artworks emerge from running linen canvases through inkjet printers, embracing the glitches and inconsistencies that naturally form even when creating via machine. These imperfections render each work unique, although various motifs recur throughout his oeuvre: geometric stripes and circles, the colour black, flames, the letters 'U' and 'X', and even a twisted Marcel Breuer chair. Later works have incorporated newer but still common technology such as screenshots and camera phone snapshots.
Since 2004, Wade Guyton has collaborated with longtime friend and fellow New York artist Kelley Walker. Their practice builds on both artists' methods of printing and scanning, appropriating images rooted in consumption and advertising such as sliced fruit and polka dots. These layered, repetitive images are then printed on three-dimensional objects such as tables, mattresses, and paint cans. Unlike Guyton's canvases, which tend to be minimalist in colour, these sculptural works are bright and saturated, echoing the overstimulation of consumer culture.
