Karl Ketamo: Bundle | Poriginal

Karl Ketamo’s exhibition explores the life cycles of images and objects, the circulation and memory of materials, as well as chance and association. Underlying the works are questions of authorship, care, and how images and objects carry traces of previous uses, people and histories.

Ketamo collects materials as he wanders: from streets, flea markets, recycling centres and wastelands. In the studio, materials may wait for a long time before connections begin to emerge between them. The meanings of the works are rarely predetermined but develop through relationships between materials, images and objects.

Recently, recycled frames, matchbox striking surfaces and bungee cords have taken the form of figures. Bristles from a street-sweeping machine have been transformed into an assemblage suggesting movement, while found photographs have returned to the wall in a different orientation, at a different scale or alongside another image. Ketamo does not seek to restore materials to their original contexts, but rather to continue their movement: photographing, moving, dismantling and reassembling them.

BIO

Karl Ketamo is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. He works mainly between photography, assemblage, installation and artists’ books. In his practice, collecting and wandering are both artistic methods and ways of being in the world. Chance, association, memory and landscape recur throughout his work, alongside an interest in the life cycles and histories of images, objects and materials.

Ketamo holds an MA from Aalto University (2020) and a BA in Photography from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2016). Ketamo’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Finland and internationally. He has published the artists’ books The Landscape of Authority (2016) and Blank (Utu Press, 2023).

www.karlketamo.com