“I was going to school in Indiana studying European art—I’m a second generation American so I look a lot at my European heritage, my identity—and my girlfriend at Indiana took me to Cincinnati to meet her grandmother. This was,” he says with a dramatic pause, “the introduction, you know the one. And we were there and it was awkward. I wasn’t too comfortable being with the family so I suggested we go into Cincinnati and go to the museum. We got to the museum—the Taft Museum of all places—and we’re walking through the main entrance hall and there are these massive nine feet tall by about seven feet wide landscape paintings, eight of them. And the little card said ‘Robert Duncanson’ and I’d never heard of this guy. I asked the security guard who he was and the security guard’s answer was, ‘Well, he was the slave of the landowner and he painted these.’ And I looked at these paintings and I said ‘No. This is not the slave of a landowner; this is an accomplished, trained artist. Who is this guy?’” Ketner’s subsequent research revealed that Duncanson was an antebellum-era free person of color that was one of the premier landscape painters of his day, before being forgotten. For someone that has spent decades understanding European art and literature, Ketner simply landed on Duncanson and liked him. “I’ve done a number of projects on the guy and he continues...” Ketner stops himself, sighing before a potent observation about his own career. “Andy Warhol and Robert Duncanson rule my life. I can’t make any decisions in my life because inevitably somebody comes along and wants me to do a Duncanson or a Warhol project.” Despite his work with post-war European artists and curators (including an intrepid curator-uncle), it’s somewhere between Duncanson and Warhol that
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“ART IS ARTIFICE,” KETNER SAYS. “AND WHEN I CREATE VISUAL ART INSTALLATIONS, I’M TRYING TO CREATE VISUAL STIMULI THAT UNFOLDS IN CERTAIN SEQUENCES WITHOUT YOU REALLY THINKING ABOUT IT.” the state of arrested development Ketner occupies lies. The way his eyes light up as he talks about them—his hands excitedly grazing the length of his desk, and his booming voice filling the room, you get a sense that maybe he might not like it any other way. em
“AMERICANA” F/W 2013