Wade Guyton’s contribution to the field of painting consists largely of his invocation of technological reproduction during the phase of image production. His inkjet printer, forced to draw in canvas (but sometimes also paper) and thus strained to keep time with the methodical printer heads, has replaced brushstrokes but become the artist’s signature all the same. The conditions of this displacement have resounding significance in relation to technology’s prevalence in society – and given the influence of photographic equipment and methods of display on contemporary visuality. The widespread critical acclaim for the artist’s recent, mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York attests to both the status of his work and its capacity to be situated within a lineage of modern painting.

"IMG_1919.JPG", Guyton’s second edition for TEXTE ZUR KUNST emphasizes the role of photography – and of its equipment – in constituting the work’s central motif. Test sheets drawn from an inkjet printer lay stacked on the bright red floor of the kitchen in the artist’s studio; a camera hovers above. Standing back, Guyton documented the setup with his iPhone and then used a modified form of the production still as the cover for the catalogue that accompanied his exhibition Drawings for a Small Room at Secession in Vienna (2011). The photograph pairs the detailed visual information of various test sheets with the saturated red of the floor. With this edition, the artist has essentially encapsulated one’s view of the exhibited works, freezing a level of remove into the work that is representative of its displacement from the original in both form and time.