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.