Black Paintings

Wade Guyton makes his Black Paintings by running raw linen canvas through a large-format inkjet printer, layering black ink pass after pass until the surface approaches an even, saturated black.

This 800-page book, published by JRP|Ringier in 2011, reproduces the series at length, tracking the small variations, streaks, misfeeds and printer artifacts that survive within an image that reads at first glance as a single flat colour. A text by the critic and Reena Spaulings co-founder John Kelsey accompanies the plates. The paperback volume's unusual length mirrors the repetitive, industrial logic of Guyton's process itself.

Guyton (born 1972, Hammond, Indiana) has worked since the early 2000s at the boundary between painting and mechanical reproduction, printing X's, flames and fragments of text onto canvas with office and studio printers. He represented the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale and had a career survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2012–13.