Wade Guyton - Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Thursday, May 16, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

  • Exhibited

    Warsaw, New Sculpture?, Zacheta National Gallery, March 10 – May 13, 2012 (another example exhibited)
    New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Wade Guyton OS, October 4– January 13, 2012 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    M. Brewińska, New Sculpture?, Warsaw: Zacheta National Gallery, 2012, digital catalogue (illustrated)
    S. Rothkopf, Wade Guyton OS, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, pp.100-101, 213 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Wade Guyton is one of the most iconic contemporary artists to emerge in the last ten years, garnering accolades from curators, collectors, and critics. Best known for his inkjet printed X and U graphics, the present lot, Wade Guyton’s important U sculpture, extends his exploration of creating and remaking in a semi-digital world. Guyton focuses his energy on the concept and the mechanical process of his work—and most interestingly, on the point where those dual elements join together and then break down. In his paintings, Guyton feeds primed canvas through ink-jet printers— and it is the printers’ misuse, and the resulting misinterpretations made by the printing technology, that renders the artist’s acclaimed aesthetic. The ‘X’s and ‘U’s that make up these paintings are simple rote letters in Microsoft Word; the mark-making reduced to random keystroke and the idiosyncrasies in the final product dependent upon mis-translation in the conversation between the digital mark and the analog output.

    His iconic sculptures, such as the chromed U in the present lot, are an extension and refined amplification of this same process. As in his paintings, the genesis of these sculptures is the simple keystroke U—but here that simple form is extruded and refined. In this series, Guyton specifically chose to work with fabricators who produced much of Donald Judd’s minimalist works—Milgo in Brooklyn, New York—in an effort to both dialog with and deconstruct minimalist art history. As such, the present U sculpture transcends Guyton’s established post-analog/pre-digital practice via its engagement with a specific art historical lineage. Formally, the U’s act to amplify and mimic themselves, reflecting mirror images of their elegant, highly polished surface while also opening this site of displacement to the viewers own image.

1

U Sculpture (v. 5)

2007
mirrored stainless steel
19 7/8 x 18 x 43 7/8 in. (50.3 x 45.7 x 111.3 cm.)
This work is number 2 from an edition of 3 plus 1 artist’s proof.

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for $365,000

Contact Specialist
Zach Miner
Head of Sale
zminer@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1256

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

New York 16 May 2013 7pm