Clay Ketter

The Sweden-based photographer and painter Clay Ketter uses texture, trompe l’oeil, and symmetry to make assemblages that mimic surfaces found in daily life. He focuses on what are usually perceived as undesirable for their scarified and dilapidated appearance, emphasizing the formal and social beauty of antiquated spaces and their crumbling stucco, tile, and stained concrete. Better known in Europe than in his native United States, Ketter has shown widely in France, Scandinavia, Germany, and Denmark, as well as America. His work often uses hardware-store materials: tile, house paint, concrete, and drywall, assembled into picturesque abstractions. Other times, he uses photographs of those same assemblages mounted on Diasec, an acrylic glass. This conflation of the photographic with the sculptural addresses itself to the inherent visuality of our experience of architectural space.