Lot 51: GUYTON\WALKER

Coconut Chandelier (# 25)

Dimensions variable. As installed 35 1/2 x 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. (90.2 x 50.2 x 50.2 cm.)

Coconuts, electrical wiring and light bulbs.

2006

Greene Naftali Gallery, New York

KELLEY WALKER What’s funny is, you or I will do something, not save the file, and then tell the other person to reproduce it for whatever reason. I’ll have a printout and
try to figure out what the hell you did and how to go about retracing your steps. That happens quite often, actually. And when I can’t figure it out, you have to come back
and say, Oh, you’re an idiot.

WADE GUYTON Or we give up and it just becomes something else entirely. That’s the thing. I’m not so loose with my own work. Somehow the collaboration really allows all
of that contingency to become a part of it. And even if it causes a problem, some other solution comes along to take care of it, which of course creates other problems. The way it grows and moves around is totally fascinating to me, too, because its shape is indeterminate.

And yet the work has an identity. It may be problematic or clumsy and full of failures, but we’ve actively kept it alive. It’s a pain in the ass, but it is simultaneously a relief.
And I learn from it all the time. It’s weird to feel ownership but then also feel as if you’re separate from it — that it’s alien.

KW Hate it.

WG Hate it and love it.

(Conversation between Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, <em>ARTFORUM</em>, February 2011, pp. 168 - 169)