Wade Guyton Beyeler Facsimile Objects

an installation view of eight wade guyton paintings in a row on two walls of a beyeler foundation gallery in basel, with a bright lightbox grid ceiling and a pale wood floor, one of renzo piano's museum gems that got him into the museum manufacturing business
Untitled WG5703 and WG5707, Guytons from 2024 installed at the Fondation Beyeler in 2025

The Fondation Beyeler has just come out with your first Art Basel impulse purchase: two full-scale Wade Guyton prints of paintings showing at the Beyeler right now. Around here we’d call them facsimile objects, but they are very much what Wade does and how he does it.

two mostly identical black and white artworks photographed in black and white against a white wall: a painting of a giant, misprinted capital x on a stretched canvas sitting on two little blocks is on the left, and the fundraising poster version of it, same size but with creases from being handfolded, and on paper, is on the right. the last of six fundraising edition posters by wade guyton for printed matter, 2019
X Poster (Untitled, 2007, Epson UltraChrome inkjet on linen, 84 x 69 inches, WG1211), 2019, UV-resistant ink on paper on the right and, presumably, actual Untitled, 2007, Epson UltraChrome inkjet on linen, 84 x 69 inches, WG1211 on the left. image via PrintedMatter

For six years, from 2014-19, Guyton made full-scale print facsimiles of his paintings as fundraising editions for Printed Matter. They were all posters of earlier black X-on-white paintings, and folding them by hand felt like part of the concept. From the proofs installed at the Beyeler, that does not seem to be the case anymore. These look as flat as the day they rolled off the Epson.

three white women in swiss festive clothing stand in front of two wade guyton prints that reproduce two paintings at full scale. the abstract one on the left in red and black uses a photo of the artist's studio floor; the one on the right is a scan of an x painting. both have been digitally manipulated. they are in thin steel frames in the lobby space of a museum, the fondation beyeler, in basel in 2025
[L] Untitled (Untitled, 2024, Epson UltraChrome HDX inkjet on linen, 84 x 69 inches, WG5703), 2025, and [R] Untitled (Untitled, 2024, Epson UltraChrome HDX inkjet on linen, 84 x 69 inches, WG5707), 2025: I see floating, I see margins, I see reflectivity-induced subjectivity, I see no creases in these Buyeler editions whose “estimated delivery date is mid-November 2025” [bold in the original]

TFW I thought I’d seen these before, not just at the Beyeler, and I was like, “Duh, that’s his MO.” But no, I don’t mean in the “all Guytons look alike” mode. I mean in the sense that I felt like I’d seen these paintings before, at Guyton’s 2023 show at Matthew Marks. The X painting, WG5707, depicts a different scan of a different, earlier X painting than the one at Marks. And in fact, the 2024 Beyeler painting in the 2025 Beyeler print has striations that look like a photo of a monitor of a scan of a transparency of a painting, rather than just a scan of a transparency of a painting.

a thin grey line and white border around this image of a wade guyton painting of a photo of the artist's studio floor indicates that it is a print of that painting. the photo for the painting has been manipulated to highlight the dark blacks and reds in the worn and often-repainted floor. the painting is on view at the beyeler, who is selling this print edition in 2025
the jpg rendering of the 2025 print of the 2024 Beyeler painting, WG5703

But the other one, WG5703, the photo of Guyton’s studio floor, is, in fact, the same photo, though not the same painting.

a wade guyton painting from 2023 of layers of worn paint on the floor of his studio. the abstract striated pattern looks like a richter squeegee painting or a clyfford still in composition. the saturated red, green, and black patches read as paint colors, but it turns out the artist alters the colors before printing his canvases. this variation was shown at matthew marks in 2023
Guyton’s Untitled (WG5546), 2023, inkjet on linen, 84 x 69 in., was at Matthew Marks in 2023

Guyton likes to paint, photograph, and repaint the floor of his studio, and these Clyfford Still-like layered abstractions are the glorious result. But what these two paintings show is not found wear & tear. The tape, the shoe[?] in the lower left corner, the separations [not just layering, it turns out] of color. This is the same photo, in different states, printed on canvas, twice. Three times, actually; the Beyeler already has another variation from 2021.

For a long time, Guyton was known to use the same files [.doc, .tiff], and give attention to the accidents and variations of the printing process. He staged multiple shows with identical layouts of images made from the same monochrome image, bigblack.tiff, and even sent five nearly identical paintings to his five dealers spread out around the Messe at Basel.

But from observing these little differences in the same content, Guyton has expanded his source image folder to include screenshots of the Times, and photos of his studio, his work, and his life. His 2021 show at Marks in LA included images of Guyton recording his temperature. In 2023 there were paintings made of photos of protests, and a Manet ham.

As the vagaries of printing become absorbed into the language of his work, Guyton has expanded what he says by making work of what he sees. His work, his shows, images, and the world around him, have all become animating subjects of his mature process. Mature, but not static; processes are revealed in between the finding and the printing. As these two floor paintings show, the images flowing around him may also be manipulated, altered, and created.

At first I thought the recursiveness was new, too, but I think it was always there; the works, their shifting formats, their nested titles, their numbering system, all make us aware of the artist’s awareness. The beauty of that churn, that cycle, of making and showing and remaking, is a compelling subject for at least a hundred people going to Basel for the 20th or 30th time for buying and selling. One hundred plus ten artist proofs.

Previously, related:
Waderunner
Wade Guyton [Manet] Simulacrum Facsimile Object
It’s the little differences

Wade Guyton For Love And Money

Wade Guyton, Untitled, 2008, 8×4 ft, ed. 3 of 7, not sold at Phillips in 2019 for £30,000 – 50,000

One of my favorite things to discover about Maria Lind’s 2012 Abstract Possible: The Stockholm Synergies show was the Wade Guyton narrative arc. And how Guyton’s massive, black painted plywood floor in the Konsthall raised the profile of the his black printed plywood edition in Lind’s controversial selling show at Bukowskis auction house. And how that very example did not sell then. And it did not sell in 2019. And it did not sell again in 2022.

And so the “Distinguished European Collector” who’s been stuck with it—I like to think it’s the Lundins—has had to keep enjoying what is truly, as far as these things go, an iconic work. How would it be?

Well, for a brief shining moment, now you can find out.

Wade Guyton, Untitled for Parkett 83, 2008, 48 x 24 x 1/2 in., pigment print on plywood, ed. 38/XXII, actually the last one is available at Parkett right now

One reason I thought of for why this excellent example of Guyton’s work didn’t sell was the volume. Not just that it is an edition, but that there are actually two editions. When Guyton made this 8×4 ft plywood edition of seven in 2008, he also made a Parkett edition of 60 [38 numbered, XXII proofs].

But as I’ve noted before, what matters about the works of Guyton’s Black Paintings Era, which were all produced using the same monochromatic bigblack.tif file, is that they exist as a series. The editions, even more so. I’m getting shivers just imagining them being made all at once, 22 sheets of ply pumped into the inkjet printer, and admiring the the little differences.

Like being little. Though it elegantly maintains the proportion and scale of the ed. 7, Guyton’s untitled edition for Parkett 83 is a quarter of the size [4 x 2 ft., 15 sheets/4 = 60.]

Think what it’s like to move it around, perhaps in your car, or even in your pickup, or to store it, or to ship it. What the Parkett edition may lack in surface area, it more than makes up for in convenience.

And now, somehow, Parkett has one left, the “last available work from a previously sold-out edition.”

So you could wait a couple of years, and hope that Ed. 3/7 turns up again with another markdown—an uncertainty given the critical praise on Guyton’s recent productively incisive push forward through his past. Or you can take those ten thousand euros, and invest them right now, for which astuteness you will be rewarded with complimentary shipping.