Clay Ketter was first acknowledged for his Wall Paintings (1992-99), plasterboards with spackle over screws and joints. They were both strikingly beautiful abstract paintings and a sort of fabricated ready-mades, less finished than the wall they were hung on.
Trace Paintings (1995-) is another series of paintings that resemble wall surfaces being redecorated. Traces of wallpaper, shelves and electric wiring evoke a sense of uncertainty in the onlooker as to whether this is a real wall or a painting of a wall.
Combining consistency and innovation, Clay Ketter has continued to produce works in the borderland between architecture, sculpture and painting. The variation between media including painting, photography and sculpture are complex, but his works are always visually arresting, with their terse composition and sensitive shift of colour. Clay Ketter’s relationship to scale and impact incorporates him in an American painterly tradition that started in abstract expressionism and developed into minimalism.
A richly illustrated catalogue with essays by the exhibition curator, Magnus af Petersens, and other writers will be published jointly with Steidl publishers.
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