Wade Guyton

This black panel, which recalls the weighty history of monochrome painting throughout the twentieth century, from Aleksandr Rodchenko to Ad Reinhardt, was made with Guyton’s signature technique, in which he produces works that approximate paintings but are created solely with a computer and printer. This work consists of a sheet of standard plywood whose surface has been printed through a commercial inkjet process—a reversal of the conventional woodcut technique, in which carved wood is inked to transfer a composition to paper. Guyton created a digital image of a solid black rectangle—the color formulated with a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to create the richest tone—and left the rest to chance, allowing any inconsistencies or failures in the printing or material (knots in the plywood or visible manufacturer’s stamps) to be exposed. Propped against the wall, the work is simultaneously a print, a painting, a sculpture, and a ready-made object, asserting what the artist sees as “the malleability of the categories of art.”