David
Kramer
Bio
David Kramer
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 “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.
Pieces
Number of items found:
5
Artist's Statement
Whether I am working with paint or with yarn, text and imagery are the main ingredients in my work. I am inspired by landscape. Often the inherent beauty of nature makes me want to paint. But no matter how hard I try it is always something of a letdown to the majestic beauty of nature. My words are the conversations that are going on in my head, swirling around while I am trying to do the impossible; to make something that will rival the real thing. The text is often written as a disclaimer or something of a distraction. A self-deprecating joke. The play between the words and the image does something that nature can never do. These two layers congers an emotional connection that worms into the brain. This, for me, is the place where the art really happens. When I find myself in this place where the words and image are working together, it is then that I feel that I can do something that can rival nature.
It is in these moments, when image and language intertwine, that the boundaries between observation and invention dissolve. The canvas becomes a stage where the seen and the spoken perform an intimate duet—each amplifying, contradicting, and tempering the other. What emerges is not just a representation, but an experience, a space where the imagination can roam untethered, mapping new territories of feeling and memory. I am drawn to this uncertainty, the fertile ground where meaning flickers, ambiguous and alive. Here, the viewer is invited to inhabit not just my vision, but their own, and together we bear witness to something that is at once familiar and entirely new.