Wade Guyton (B. 1972)

‘I’ve become interested in when something starts as an accident and then becomes a template for other things, or reproduces itself and generates its own logic until something else intervenes to change it.' WADE GUYTON

A horizontal system of monochrome striations streams across the surface of a canvas in Wade Guyton’s untitled work, resonating with the avant-garde linearity of modernist abstraction whilst exploring contemporary methods of digital reproduction and technological dependence. Printed onto a vertical canvas, which Guyton manually tugs through the rollers of an Epsom Inkjet printer, Untitled presents five strips of jet-black, manifested in a variable range of widths, at once hypnotic and imposing. The printer is an unreliable narrator, producing unexpected disturbances, mutations and mistakes. In a fascinating dichotomy between human intent and mechanic disturbance, Guyton allows the fallible manipulations of the printer – mis-registrations, distortions and smudges – to intercede, creating a tension between artist, material and technology. In a world dominated by technological automation, Guyton challenges the essentiality of idiosyncratic authorial control, whilst generating and emphasising the creative possibilities of the machine.