Lo-Down Arts Contributor Ashlie Cotton stopped by the Theater For The New City after we heard from artist Peter J. Ketchum about his show, “30 Years Hanging Tenaciously on the Edge,” which is currently up in the gallery there.
Peter told us: “After going to see (the space), it is 2000 square feet…a white orgy of walls for an artist, I said I’d love to show there. Because I am toddering towards 70 and now well beyond the acceptable age limit for artists– submerging more than emerging– I figured what the hell. I’ll make it a retrospective (with the emphasis on RETRO since most of my work draws on the ephemera of different eras, mostly before the 1940’s) and would hang examples from my various periods– work the NYTimes once called provocative and strange.”
Ashlie writes:
As I entered the gallery space at Theater For The New City, I was pleasantly surprised at the eclectic vibe of the show. The space seemed so different from every other gallery show that I had been to lately; the walls were screaming of the old eccentricities of the East Village. The lobby for this rich cultural center doubles as gallery, and it is here that the retrospective show for Peter J. Ketchum hangs.
His pieces are all at once witty and provocative as he takes controversial images and words from the past and reinstates them in the modern world. Ketchum’s lighter and more comical work reminded me of the playful Ashleigh Brilliant, who created pot-shots. Other pieces are more serious and have deeper messages about topics like sexism and racism. This is defiantly an interesting and unique show to check out before it closes on October 25th.
