Moderna Museet c/o BoStad 02

Then you simply get down to business. You just do it.

Perhaps the best thing about Clay Ketter’s work is that it gets you thinking along that line. It’s extremely generous in that way.

As opposed to the deft conjuring tricks of the modern building industry, which become especially apparent at building fairs such as this one, when suddenly whole neighbourhoods appear from one day to the next, without anyone really understanding how it happened or who actually needs them, Ketter makes no attempt to hide his tricks. Instead, on one level, his works aim to demonstrate a technique and the set of rules that this technique is based on. In this way, they serve (among other things) to demystify the largely impenetrable processes behind modern housing construction.

This didactic dimension is an ignored, but nonetheless essential, aspect of Clay Ketter’s work. In fact, nearly everything he has done, from his early plaster paintings (which basically demonstrated how to apply spackle to standard-sized gypsum wallboard) to today’s more complex compositions, are excellent as practical instructions on how to plaster or put up a wall: you do it like this. And like this. In other words, his works are ”utilitarian” in a way that we usually do not expect art to be; in this respect, they are related to DIY handbooks as well as to the classical tradition of painting.

One could say that Clay Ketter’s works thus overstep one of art’s taboos. Inscrutability is, in fact, an essential part of the concept of art that has prevailed since the Romantic era (and which Post-Modernism can hardly be said to have broken with). Art should not reveal its secrets – on the contrary, it should do everything to keep them; herein lies much of the value of art. Above all, art should not be didactic or explanatory.If we consider why this is so, one thing becomes obvious: art and the building industry have a lot in common. As in any activity where huge sums of money are involved, it is important, not to say crucial, to shroud the process in mystery. This applies both to the relatively exclusive discipline of art as well as to the economically and socially fundamental issue of how we live.

As mentioned, building fairs provide an excellent opportunity to study this inscrutability. It appears that ideally houses would build themselves, without human assistance, like in the story of Aladdin and the magic lantern.Clay Ketter’s works tell a different story. Not that they are directly concerned with issues such as these, but they do offer a vantage point from which we can start to reflect on them. As well as on other issues, naturally – issues relating to sculpture and painting, for instance, or the role of documentary material in art. Or that building a house is admittedly not easy at all – as everyone who has ever tried to mix plaster to the right consistency will know.

The point, however, is that Clay Ketter in the way he reveals the process of craftsmanship also touches on another, more hidden problem. This is, of course, partly associated with his breach with the Romantic artistic mystique that was born out of the historical separation of art from crafts (although they had once been the same). One might ask what it means when we suddenly find ourselves regarding, say, an albeit skilfully executed bit of plastering as a work of art? Has something changed in our perception of art? Or is it merely our attitude to the art of plastering that is influenced?

Or, could it be – as one might fear in one’s most pessimistic moods – that nothing ever really changes; that the wall between “art” and “reality” (to simplify the problem substantially) has in no way removed in our time? That the wall merely has become more elastic, so that “art” can sometimes swallow up parts of “reality” without really having to digest it, since the wall just closes up afterwards, seamlessly? In other words: even after we have accepted plastering as a possible artistic technique, we can apparently continue to safely regard the majority of plastering as “non-art”, since we know that it’s the thought that counts when the chips are down.

This is obviously a convenient attitude. But is it really that simple?

Clay Ketter’s works are based, I believe, on the hope that it doesn’t have to be, that some things can, after all, be changed. That craftsmanship, the actual physical process of performing a task, is just as significant. The installation here at BoStad 02 is presented as a joint project between Clay Ketter and Lars-Johan Claesson, his assistant over the past eight years. This is an important statement. Perhaps not in copyright terms – but certainly as an acknowledgement of the fact that in a collaboration of such long standing it is no longer possible to draw a distinct line between individual contributions. They merge increasingly. When it comes down to it, it’s all about highlighting a completely normal and general phenomenon – something that everyone knows and accepts, that no one finds particularly controversial but no one ever talks about. That artists – again, in a way that resembles the building industry – use paid labour, subcontractors and private entrepreneurs, is a simple fact that is usually considered to be completely irrelevant. It is not – tacitly – the effort itself that is important.

Again, Clay Ketter’s works convey a different message. For him, the effort itself is the important part. In a time where work is continuously obscured and disparaged in comparison to the dazzling world of money, he foregrounds a reality of hands-on processes. In this sense, his works can be seen as realistic representation. From another perspective, they are something entirely different: models of perfection, of the absolute. One could say they dream a dream about themselves. And one could add: Just as art always has done. The important thing is maybe just how it all fits together.

Text: Dan Jönsson