Clay Ketter – Barrio Cartoon

It is with great pleasure that Cecilia Hillström Gallery presents Clay Ketter’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, Barrio Cartoon. This show also marks the gallery’s representation of the artist over a decade following its inception in 2012.

Over Ketter’s long career, each exhibition has taken the viewer by surprise in its innovative combination of subject matter and craftmanship. Always infused by Ketter’s unmistakably firm foundation in art history, in particular the groundbreaking developments on the American continent starting from the 1950s and onwards, Ketter’s working method reveals a complex relationship to painting as an act.

Barrio Cartoon is the second series of works in which biomorphic forms float over photographic motifs taken in the barrios of Valencia in Spain between 2003 and 2005. Having generally seen photography as merely an element in his works, Ketter began already in 2004 to alter these motifs – painting upon them and incorporating them into constructed wall objects and paintings. The new series of works is not only a continuation of this long process of coming to terms with the photographic works, but also with painting as a working method.

With Barrio Cartoon, Clay Ketter returns to his principle of painting without painting. The focus lies on superimposition, as opposed to sympathetic integration. Vinyl film is applied to the glass-mounted photos, allowing the film’s cartoonish forms to spill over the surfaces of the photographs in a seemingly carefree relationship with the underlying image. Gradually during the production, the colors of the vinyl started to live a life of their own, assuming a transformative roll. The result is a radical abstraction where the works seem to express their own determination.

With references to popular culture, the slick and shiny vinyl forms linger on the surface of the underlying images, allowing a playfulness which may be seen as one way of coming to terms with the entropy apparent in the photographical material. The demolition and subsequent disappearance of the barrios carries both sorrow and beauty, marking the relentless passing of time. Barrio Cartoon revisits a place which no longer exists, imbuing this realm with the seemingly random glee of these colorful biomorphic shapes.

Clay Ketter (born 1961 in Brunswick, Maine) works in painting, sculpture and photography. Over recent years, Ketter has had solo shows in London, New York, Paris, and Copenhagen, as well as participated in group shows at Whitechapel Gallery and Saatchi Gallery, London, Lunds konsthall, Artipelag and Norrköpings Konstmuseum. In 2022-23, Ketter had a solo show at RAVINEN, Båstad. He is represented in numerous international collections such as Saatchi Collection, London, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, New York, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Perez Museum Collections, Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Prada Foundation, Milano. In a Nordic context, Ketter’s work is part of the collections at Moderna Museet, Malmö Konstmuseum, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art/Skissernas Museum, Lund, Uppsala Konstmuseum, Astrup Fearnley Museet, ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst and Louisiana.