Galerie Francesca Pia is pleased to announce the sixth solo exhibition with Wade Guyton. This will also be the final exhibition in the gallery space in Zurich.

The installation includes eight recent large format paintings and two new metal sculptures.

The sculptures are casts of two Tyvek-wrapped cardboard tubes that were used to store Guyton’s red-and-green stripe paintings shown at the gallery in 2011. When the artist recently reinstalled these long paintings at the Bechtler Stiftung in Uster and at the Langen Foundation in Neuss, Germany, he discovered that after more than ten years in storage the tubes had sagged slightly, causing the Tyvek to twist and wrinkle. These minor effects of gravity, humidity and material failure produced wrinkles in his paintings and left more dramatic patterns in the Tyvek itself. The sculptures are comprised of two distinct but inseparable parts: the inner cardboard tube cast in aluminum and the outer taped Tyvek layer cast in bronze. The two metals have different weights, densities and melting temperatures – aluminum turns to liquid at 660 °C and bronze at 913 °C.

The eight new paintings are made with the artist’s typical process, using an Epson SureColor P20000 printer, archival UltraChrome PRO pigment inks and oil-primed linen. The paintings include images of wet printed ink, mountains in the Engadin at dusk, an older metal chair sculpture, his wooden studio floor in black and red, plastic dropcloths and unstretched paintings drying on the floor. One painting depicts the studio under renovation, with old plumbing exposed and plaster walls being demolished. This painting hangs on a newly built wall that compresses the gallery space, creating a more condensed environment for these ten works.