David Kramer
October 8th, 2011 § 2 Comments
The 1970′s (at least, everything that the 1970′s was supposed to be) is still alive and well in the drawings and paintings of David Kramer. The NYC-based artist has just opened a new show at Heiner Contemporary in Washington D.C. I first came across him at the Laurant Godin booth in last year’s Armory Show, and it is a pleasure to be able to see more of his work now.
The main image sources for Kramer are magazines from the 70′s, with their colorful ads and glossy pages, the cars and the cigarettes and the naked women and the hot tubs. Crazy color schemes and clashing clothes, turtlenecks under tweed jackets, headbands, swingers, hi-fi, jai-alai. Kramer utilizes these sources to great effect, giving his work an older visual reference style but keeping it fresh and contemporary. The fact that the works are more sketchy than completed helps keep them from being just windows on a time period. A number of artists use porn magazines from the 70′s and 80′s, and it is good that Kramer looks beyond that. His is a broader scope, his quest isn’t for a pre-AIDS sex romp, he wants a pre-Regan smoothness.
The artist also includes text in his work: thoughts, funny stories, observations. Kramer doesn’t want to re-live the 1970s, he wants the kind of life that was promised to him when he was growing up there. The words, then, are personal and intimate, funny and a little sad, as the artist struggles with adulthood. The fact that the works tell us he has come up shorter than he would like make them accessible to anyone who views them; we are all part of the same club.
—
All artworks are copyright David Kramer. A nice interview of the artist by Matthew Smith can be found on the New American Paintings blog. All images were borrowed from Heiner Contemporary, where the exhibition continues through October.
Heiner Contemporary not Hilger
Hi Katharine, thanks for catching my typo!