Lot 1: Guyton\Walker

Paint Cans (from Dear Ketel One drinker hello again)

Overall 30 x 33 x 15 in. (76.2 x 83.8 x 38.1 cm).

Digital inkjet prints and paint cans (in 12 parts).

2006

Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis

KELLEY WALKER: It’s almost not a collaboration; it’s like impersonation. We are able to impersonate this character and we can take turns. We can come and go. I think one thing about Guyton/Walker that’s never quite been understood is that sometimes we’re equally engaged in the work and at other times we’re at different distances from it.
 
WADE GUYTON: We have very different attention spans at different times.
 
KW: Because we also have our separate, individual careers.
 
WG: After our recent show at the Baltimore Museum of Art – which was the first time we showed works that had been exhibited elsewhere – you said that we killed Guyton/Walker. But I thought it was more like we starting taking our meds. It was all a bit more cooperative with the museum and the viewer than usual.
 
KW: Well, I think there were ideas we were relying on that were no longer useful, and that was evident. But we are still developing a vocabulary; a consistency arises that continues to be productive for us.
 
WG: I think it naturally evolved that way. We didn’t know where things were going. We started with a shared tool – the scanner. Then we incorporated different processes and materials. And what happened was this phenomenon of things cannibalizing themselves: the painting becomes a can, the can becomes a sheet of drywall, the drywall becomes a table, and if you make tables you need to make glassware. It’s spastic. Anytime we start making things, some unexpected idea from left field comes in.
 
(Conversation between Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, ARTFORUM, February 2011, p. 168)