“In a way, the printer is in more control than I am.”
—Wade Guyton

Wade Guyton’s Untitled, 2006 stands at the crossroads of technological intervention and painterly tradition, engaging in a conceptual dialogue with modernist and postmodernist aesthetics. Known for his pioneering use of inkjet printers on unconventional materials such as linen, Guyton’s work challenges the fundamental tenets of painting, questioning authorship, materiality, and the role of accident in contemporary art. Untitled belongs to a renowned sequence of works, where the simple, bold letter X—often misaligned, distorted, or fragmented—becomes a potent symbol of both negation and creation.
 

At first glance, the composition of Untitled is striking in its stark, high-contrast geometry. The massive black X, stretching across the white canvas, appears both deliberate and unstable. It is slightly fractured, with the right half misaligned, as though the image has been disrupted mid-process. Ink streaks and irregularities, characteristic of Guyton’s method, are present along the edges, betraying the mechanical yet unpredictable nature of his process. This interplay between control and chance is central to his work, invoking the legacy of artists like Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol—figures who similarly questioned the boundaries of artistic production.

 

The X as a Conceptual Motif: Between Negation and Possibility

 

The letter X is one of the most universally recognized symbols, carrying connotations of prohibition, deletion, and mystery. It can signal an error or an erasure, yet it also marks a point of focus, as in maps or mathematical variables. Guyton’s choice to employ and repeatedly return to the X suggests both a critique and an embrace of meaning-making. As he himself has noted, ‘There is always some form of disappointment in making an artwork. In my case, there is some expectation, an attempt at translation. A struggle for some ideal—but that ideal may not always be clear, and it is likely in transition.’ⁱ

“The beauty of the single X within his framework is that it is a figure we all know in advance, and the disjointed reciprocity between its bilateral symmetry and that of the divided canvas makes it a perfect matrix on which to map—and against which to measure—the errors that animate Guyton’s process.”
—Scott Rothkopf

The X paintings initially emerged from Guyton’s experiments with printing on found materials—magazines, books, and other printed ephemera. The origins of this motif are well-documented by art historian Johanna Burton, who recalls: ‘Ripping another page from his stack of magazines and books, he fed it through his home printer (this one little and cheap: an Epson, but no Ultra) after plugging in a ridiculously high point size and typing one giant letter into an otherwise blank Word document: X.’ⁱⁱ This simple yet radical act—imposing a large, dominant symbol onto pre-existing images—set the foundation for a practice that would later evolve onto linen canvases. In Untitled, the X is no longer simply an overlay but a monumental, self-contained form, removed from any prior context yet still carrying an aura of negation, interference, and transformation.

“You tap a keyboard with one finger and this very large painting emerges. It’s gone against everything we think of as a painting. Pollock flung it; Rauschenberg silkscreened it; Richter took a squeegee; Polke used chemicals. Wade is working in what by now is a pretty venerable tradition, against the conventional idea of painting.”
—Ann Temkin

Technological Interference and Painterly Tradition

 

Guyton’s use of industrial inkjet printers subverts traditional notions of painting. The mechanical precision of digital printing clashes with the inherent imperfections of the process: ink can smudge, printers jam, and surfaces fold or misalign. This tension between automation and accident is key to his work. As writer and curator Tim Griffin observes, ‘Guyton’s work […] resuscitates a Minimalism whose heart is still beating under art history’s floorboards."ⁱⁱⁱ In Untitled, this is evident in the way the black ink appears layered with subtle variations, evoking the rich surfaces of Abstract Expressionist painting while remaining distinctly mechanical. The central seam in the work—where the two halves of the canvas meet—is reminiscent of Barnett Newman’s ‘zip’ paintings, yet it arises not from human hand but from the limitations of the printing process. The result is a work that is at once rigorously structured and vulnerably imperfect.

 

Art Historical Context and the Legacy of Reproduction

 

Guyton’s practice is deeply indebted to movements that interrogated the role of reproduction in art. His use of the printer as a generative tool recalls Warhol’s silkscreens, where mechanical repetition introduced subtle variations that challenged ideas of originality. Similarly, his engagement with language—transforming a simple letter into an emblem of artistic inquiry—echoes the conceptual strategies of artists like Lawrence Weiner and Joseph Kosuth. Yet, unlike many of his predecessors, Guyton operates in an era where digital production is omnipresent. The smooth, pixelated edges of his X forms contrast with the organic, brushy textures of 20th-century abstraction. His method of splitting the composition and feeding the canvas through the printer in two parts further fractures the notion of seamless image-making, emphasizing the errors and disruptions inherent in technological processes.

 

As curator Scott Rothkopf aptly describes, ‘Their haphazard grandeur owes both to this motif and to Guyton’s constant negotiation between technical failure and mastery, physical accident and control… the interaction between the digital and the manual, the pictorial and the literal, have always been at the heart of Guyton’s practice.’^iv This dynamic is particularly evident in Untitled, where the shifting alignment of the X and the subtle streaks of misplaced ink highlight the limits of precision, transforming technological breakdown into aesthetic innovation.

The Future of Painting in the Digital Age

 

Untitled stands as a seminal example of Guyton’s ability to navigate the tensions between past and present, painting and printmaking, control and contingency. By reducing his composition to the simplest of elements—black ink on a white surface, a single letter disrupted by its own mechanical execution—he expands the possibilities of what painting can be. Through Untitled, Guyton compels viewers to reconsider not only the physical act of mark-making but also the broader implications of technological mediation in contemporary life. In a world saturated with digital images, Guyton’s X is both an artifact of technological failure and a testament to the enduring power of abstraction. His practice reminds us that even in an era of machine-driven production, the human element—its errors, its improvisations, its moments of disruption—remains at the core of artistic expression.

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• American artist Wade Guyton first came to prominence in the mid-2000s with his landmark series of abstract paintings made by running folded linen canvas through a commercial inkjet printer.
   
• The subject of many significant institutional solo exhibitions internationally, works by the artist are held in the permanent collections of major institutions including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the San Franscisco Museum of Modern Art.

 

 

ⁱ Wade Guyton, quoted in Silvia Simoncelli, ‘Interview with Wade Guyton’, On Curating, Issue 20, October 2013, online.

ⁱⁱ Johanna Burton, ‘Rites of Silence: The Art of Wade Guyton’, Artforum, vol. 46, no. 10, Summer 2008, online.

ⁱⁱⁱ Tim Griffin, ‘Tim Griffin on Wade Guyton’, Artforum, vol. 41, no. 5, January 2003, online.

^iv Scott Rothkopf, quoted in ‘Operating System’, Wade Guyton OS, New York, 2012, p. 25.