Clay Ketter at the Moderna Museet
Garage Workshop, 1999
Just in time to plan my visit to Sweden, Clay Ketter’s retrospective opens this month at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Born in Maine, Ketter has lived in Sweden for the past 20 years and is mostly thought of now as a Nordic artist. Sometimes compared to Rothko or Rauschenberg for his play with color and form, Ketter is constantly able to produce pieces that are both wildly expressive and contained or minimalist at the same time. Take his Gulf Coast Slabs, a series of aerial portraits of homes blown to their foundation by Hurricane Katrina. At first they look like the torn remnants of billboards in between ads, and the muted colors and architectural form are elements of what might be a nice study in composition, but once you realize you’re looking down on the remains of someone’s home there is a kind of silent-scream effect.
Ketter’s other work is equally arresting. What he can do with one color really puts those “Let’s paint the canvas all white and hang it in a museum” guys to shame. Here’s hoping he’ll have a retrospective a little closer to home one day.
Clay Ketter at the Moderna Museet, May 30 – August 16, 2009
Gulf Coast Slabs, 2008
It’s you, perfected!
