Time for a reality check. Artist David Kramer’s work showcases aspirational imagery juxtaposed with humorous yet sobering text, demonstrating that advertisers and social media influencers are full of crap.
David Kramer, New Meaning, 2019
“The paintings of David Kramer are full of self-deprecating humor, irony, and witticisms that question the conceits of adulthood and the artist’s own place within it,” according to the press release for Essential Oils, an exhibition of Kramer’s recent work currently on view at Soho’s Owen James Gallery. “Through a combination of text and image, Kramer melds nostalgia with disillusionment.”
Born in NYC, Kramer grew up in Westchester County. He studied painting at George Washington University in DC and received his MFA in sculpture from Pratt. He lives in Manhattan and for 16 years has worked from a studio on the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. “I’m like the last artist in Williamsburg,” he joked at the opening of his exhibit last Thursday.
“At some point I found myself making sculptures that had really long titles,” he recalled of his early work. “Then I started to look around for images and I found myself really drawn to old Playboy magazines, old Life magazines, old Esquires.” Kramer’s paintings are influenced by lifestyle advertisements from the 70s, images hawking alcohol, cigarettes, and cars, “things that were all about desire.” He ultimately merged the glam 70s imagery with his trademark quips.
Since Kramer included models found in the pages of Playboy in his work, he was accused of objectifying women. “I was really just objectifying everything...money...cars. It was all about the American Dream and me not having it,” he said laughing.
“It was not really a complaint, it was really humorous and self-deprecating,” he continued. “So as much as I was objectifying all these things, I was really turning it all as a mirror on me and making fun of myself.”
David Kramer, Worst Enemy, 2019
David Kramer, Sorry. Not Sorry, 2019
David Kramer, Better In The Future, 2019
David Kramer's Clown, 2019 and Borderline Genius, 2019
Self-mocking one-liners abound in Essential Oils. Humorous phrases layered on abstract backgrounds are contradicted by “comments or opposing views that were generated through the process of resolving the paintings,” according to the press release. A colorfully splotchy canvas reading “My Own Worst Enemy” includes a tiny note on the bottom “…the moment before it starts again,” while a big bold “WRONG” centered on a leafy green backdrop features the footnote “Sorry…Not Sorry” faintly written in the lower left corner.
Text is the “starting point” for Kramer’s paintings. He begins with a series of drawings based on magazine ads or more recently, images he finds on Instagram. “These quick sketches always end up with some kind of text on them. These texts tend to be stream of consciousness comments. It is from these pieces that the texts on my larger paintings come from,” he explained. “I also sometimes hear something on talk radio, remember something from a conversation, or just luckily overhear people talking,” he added. “All of these contribute to my text.”
David Kramer, The Circus Is Running The Circus, colored yarn and burlap, 2019
Regarding his 1970s-style hook rug which features the ouroboros-like phrase “The Circus Is Running” circling continuously, Kramer explains, “I cannot fully believe that I was the first to have the thought 'The Circus Is Running The Circus,' but I did find it somewhere in my thoughts and then figured out how to use it, so I am going to say it is now one of mine. All of this swirls around somewhere in my brain and eventually ends up as the starting point for a new piece.”
A series of nine sunset images culled from random Instagram accounts also features Kramer’s sardonic musings such as: “This Is Totally A Vanity Project” and “Tomorrow…I Start My Apology Tour.”
“The sunset is kind of this ubiquitous thing that everybody puts on Instagram,” he noted. “I’m always trying to come up with these oxymorons that are kind of positive and negative at the same time, that are talking about this sort of splendid moment that is fleeting and will never be the same…. You can’t imagine how good it is because it isn’t that good. I’m undermining it.”
Works by David Kramer featuring sunset images found on Instagram
Even the title of his show, Essential Oils, is satirical. “I remember having a conversation with a friend about a person who made his fortune in essential oils,” Kramer said. “This led me to think of someone putting tiny drops of fragrant oils into tiny bottles and charging a small fortune for each bottle.”
Kramer thought of himself “spending a small fortune” whenever he goes to the art supply store to purchase “tiny tubes of paint” then “smearing all that paint onto canvases.” He reinterpreted the “idea of essential oils” and incorporated it into his “own self-deprecating machine” with the hope that his paintings will some day be “considered essential” as well.
His facetious, insightful jabs at society and himself are getting Kramer noticed, even by the fashion elite. Hedi Slimane, the influential fashion designer and creative director of Celine collaborated with Kramer on the brand’s 70s-inspired Spring 2020 menswear collection, featuring some of the artist’s graphics and bon mots on t-shirts and bags.
David Kramer at the opening of Essential Oils, January 9, 2020
“Humor is always the main ingredient in everything that I make,” Kramer insists, “even if I am the only one who ends up getting the jokes.”
Check out Artsy and Kramer's Instagram to see more of his funny and nostalgic work that will have Gen Xers pining for the good old 70s.
David Kramer: Essential Oils
Owen James Gallery
59 Wooster Street, Second Floor, NYC
On view through March 7
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