In the Plus/Space September 10 - October 16, 2022

Opening: Saturday, September 17, 5:30-8pm

PROOF OF EVERYTHING AND NOTHING AT ALL is an exhibit of Peter J. Ketchum’s work created with found, repurposed photos as a central element in large mixed media works. The works are visual meditations on mortality and immortality—and on morality and immorality. Photographs are proof. They are visual evidence of our having been here. Whether an 1850’s daguerrotype, a cabinet card, arcade photo, or modern selfie, a photo is proof of our existence. It preserves our image--and actions-- for future generations. Photographs are proof of love, hate, crime, and identity. They document important milestones and everyday mundanity. They are evidence, verification, corroboration and authentication. They are confirmation and visual testimony. Photographic proof is irrefutable.
In making most of these works, an enlargement of a found black and white image or graphic was altered-- add this here, delete that there. It was then colored with acrylics, pens, markers, photo dyes, pencils and/or paint pens and incorporated into the larger, mixed media work.
Ketchum’s art is a collaboration with unknown photographers and subjects. The people in the pictures, made anonymous by time and negligence, lived in a moment as impermanent and ethereal as yours and mine. Like all of us, they smiled bravely at the camera…
SNAP! CLICK!
And were gone. Pulvis et umbra sumus.