Gyuton\Walker

The collaboration involving Wade Guyton (Hammond, Indiana, USA, 1972) and Kelley Walker (Columbus, Georgia, USA, 1969) does not mark the formation of a stable duo nor an occasional collaboration project, but rather the approach of a self standing personality, an actual “third artist”, which is not so much the fusion of the artists’ autonomous practices as the need to tackle concerns faced by both of them in their separate research. By repossessing pre-existing images drawn from mass media, advertising, graphics and contemporary art, Guyton\Walker redefines and further explores Appropriation strategies and methodologies. The works in the show – their first large museum presentation in Europe – are heterogeneous as are their means of production: a mix of computerized graphics, silk-screen and digital printing on canvases, labels, flags, architecture-sized paraffin candles or even the walls and ceiling panels of the exhibition gallery. The flatness and commodity status of the original images take on an installation dimension which leads the two-dimensionality of the printed matter to dialogue with the three-dimensionality of the exhibition space. On the other hand the digital technologies used make these same images sublimate almost to becoming transparent, overlappable in an infinity of possible alternatives. In these set-ups, the boundaries usually defining the author, the image and the museum are called into question and, at the same time, given renewed drive. These formats are continually renewed by Guyton\Walker, engaging a real-time verification of their own consistency.

Catalogue: texts by Vincent Pécoil, Andrea Viliani and a conversation between Johanna Burton and Bettina Funcke.

Gyuton\Walker
(Wade Guyton, Kelley Walker)
Kurator: Andrea Viliani