KARSTEN MORAN | courtesy THE NEW YORK TIMES
Artist Wade Guyton in his New York studio in front of a work produced by an inkjet printer on linen
TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art, have announced the collectors and art patrons Lisa and John Runyon as the 2014 Event Chairs and artist Wade Guyton as the recipient of the 2014 amfAR Award of Excellence for Artistic Contributions to the Fight Against AIDS. Over the last sixteen years, TWO X TWO raised over $45 million, securing money to both help in the fight against AIDS and help in the purchasing of contemporary art for the Dallas Museum of Art. Win/win.
Of course, TWO x TWO gets a world of heat for being ultra-exclusive, more than a little vampiric (local artists donate scads of work but are never invited to the big night), and in general a boozy, blue-chip, big-huge-wallet fest. Tales of famous people behaving badly always leak through the locked gates of the party; or famous people behaving badly sneak through the gates themselves—who could forget Mark Grotjan’s inebriated writhing in front of the Rachofsky’s Richard Meier-designed digs three years ago?
Wade Guyton, this year’s guest star It-Kid (it-man?), recently had a retrospective at the Whitney which received rave reviews. He is thought to be a sort of new media pioneer, what with his ink-jet printed “paintings.” Maybe so. All that matters for TWO x TWO, though, is that he lather the jet set into a charitable frenzy.
