David Kramer - Drawings
David Kramer, I Will Take Style Over Substance…, 2019
This modern world has not turned out to be the gauzy utopia we were once promised, and David Kramer is here to tell us all about it. 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. Through a combination of text and image, Kramer melds nostalgia with disillusionment.
David Kramer, If Character Had Currency…, 2019
David Kramer, I Like To Think Of Myself…, 2019
A child of the 1970s, David Kramer pulls from that formative decade, re-crafting its lifestyle advertisements and distinctive interior design into paintings, drawings, and installations both nostalgic and ironic. His compositions resemble the advertisements that, as he claims (with the tongue-in-cheek humor that shapes his output), modeled his future: “I felt certain that my future would look a lot like what I was looking at in those ads. […] I am still hoping to grow up and get my hands on those things.”
Text is central to Kramer’s work. He overlays what he calls his “one-liners” onto his images, revealing the falsity of the idealized vision they present and the disillusionment of adulthood. In Plan (2011), the phrase, “In case of emergency…plan B and C,” frames a still life of whiskey and cigarettes, motifs that appear in many of his works.
David Kramer, When I Told You…, 2019
In 2019, Owen James Gallery published 2 prints with David Kramer. Although the artist is primarily known as a painter, the prints highlighted the draftsman qualities of his prolific drawings, with the added feature of unique hand-coloring of the letters by him.
David Kramer, Clown, 2019, Lithograph with hand-coloring, Edition of 35.
Published by Owen James Gallery, NY
David Kramer, Borderline Genius, 2019, Lithograph with hand-coloring, Edition of 25
Published by Owen James Gallery, NY
Also in 2019, the indie-publisher Little Big Time Press released a small-format book highlighting a selection of David Kramer’s drawings on paper, some of which are shown here. The book can be purchased on the website of Little Big Time Press.
David Kramer: Better In The Future, 2019
Published by Little Big Time Press
All artworks are © David Kramer. Images and texts are sourced from Owen James Gallery and Little Big Time Press.
Dina Gadia Collages
Dina Gadia is a mixed media artist who subverts the artifice often found in the commercial and popular culture influences in her native Philippines. Through her reuse of vintage material, Gadia reveals the inherent antagonism and prejudices applied to elements of taste, cultural imperialism, sexuality and nationalism.
Dina Gadia, Aestheticized Arrangement, 2015
Collage holds a special place in Gadia’s creative output. Trained as a graphic designer, she selects and reassembles typography, figures, and images from varied sources such as comic books, outmoded advertisements, entertainment magazines and pornographic material. The sources of her working materials are both local Filipino as well as imported American pop culture fare.
(image: Dina Gadia, Customs to Launder in a Doppelganger Habitat, 2013)
Dina Gadia, Devils of the Deep, 2015
The amalgam of indigenous and foreign cultures in the Philippines can be seen especially in the artist’s use of language. The dramatic words cut out from comic book pages adds a colorful commentary, creating surreal associations and icons that foster a unique visual identity. Alternating between English and Tagalog words and phrases, Gadia adds an often confrontational punch to her images. “Power”, “Witching Hour” and “Kislap Ng Pangil” (“A Glimmer of Fang”) play between their dramatic declarations and the ironic titles of the works themselves.
In another example, Gadia takes old covers from Liwayway Magazine (Dream Magazine), a long-running publication of serialized stories, comics and entertainment news. Here, photogenic cover models are transformed into monsters, as flames and snakes creep out of their eyes and mouth. These can be seen in different ways: as comments on accepted ideas of beauty, or condemnations of the superficial veneer of mass media publications that distract the public from the real ills of the society around them.
Dina Gadia, Liwayway (Flattering Portrait of '57), 2015
We also see in the work of Dina Gadia the reversal of sexual conceits: the female nude is often centralized and empowered, while male beefcakes are reduced to winsome decorations, or have their sexual prowess exaggerated to comical effect.
(image: Dina Gadia, Fear of Nice Things, 2015)
Dina Gadia, Unashamed Love Rites, 2015
Dina Gadia, Two Times Kitsch, 2015
All artwork ©Dina Gadia
Text and images sourced from her exhibition “Non-Mint Copy” at Owen James Gallery, NY.