David Kramer , The Hangover...Too

September 7 until October 2, 2011
Opening reception: Wednesday, September 7, 6-9 pm

at

MULHERIN + POLLARD
187 Chrystie Street and the end of Freeman Alley
New York, NY 10002
gallery phone: 212-967-0045
Contact Katharine Mulherin in Toronto at 416-993-6510
and in NY at 347-406-3690

DAVID KRAMER
THE HANGOVER…TOO
Recent Drawing, Painting, Sculpture and Installation

David Kramer, 70's Porn Painting, 2011, oil on canvas, bamboo, wood, paint, light fixtures, coloured bulbs, 74 x 65"

When asked the proverbial question, “Is the glass half full or half empty?” David Kramer’s response is something along the lines of: “Why? Don’t we have any more?”

David Kramer makes art work that tells jokes and stories or creates visual puns all asking similar types of proverbial questions and then questioning why the stock answers never quite seems to fit. Using advertisements and lifestyle magazine images, often from his youth in the 1970’s, Kramer is on an eternal mission looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the “Good Life” and the American Dream often depicted in these pages. His own proverbial questions often shape up to questions of why hasn’t his own life lived up to the promises doled out by both Hollywood and Madison Avenue.

A boozy humor is at the center of Kramer’s work. He laughs at his own eternal optimism. He steadfastly plows forward, cataloging the good life and sprinkling on top of it his singular brand of humorous copyright which often sells the viewer on the joke that he knows we are all by now “in” on. The joke that the American Dream seems to be maybe not much more than just a dream, and that all of the rumors about the mighty American will to succeed has maybe turned the page to a more lazy and tempered success story. The Hollywood ending is better off left to Hollywood and forgotten a soon as the lights go on and we leave the theater.

For this exhibition, The Hangover, Too, his first with Mulherin + Pollard, Kramer has built a wine bar into the gallery surrounded with his paintings drawings and sculptures from the past year. The wine bar is part joke about the lamenting and whining artist who spends his time drinking away his valuable time medicating his state, and also a reference to what Kramer sees as the only viable industry left in the American cannon: building theme park type places of recreation to distract ourselves from the business at hand, to sustain the greatness and promise that this country continues to boast of long after the flame has turned to a flicker.

Also on view is a sculpture, Mexico City Highway, a miniature stretch of roadway that passes through the Favela. Kramer has provided in the sculpture a roadside billboard, which depicts an image of an obviously white couple of models feeding each other chocolates. A scene which he has translated from his own trip to Mexico City this year, where he saw a society that has learned to accept the idea that the riches of a nation could be rationed into the hands of a few while the masses are left to only desire what they are allowed to see in advertisements, but my never own themselves.

David Kramer was born in New York City where he currently lives with his wife Susan Mitchell, and their son Martin. He has exhibited widely around North America and Europe, including recent one person shows at Armand Bartos Fine Art (Seems like We’ve Down This Road Before: A survey of works 1987-2010) 2010,
Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels (If you really Want Me To Go Away, Just Give Me What I Want…) 2010, and with Galerie Laurent Godin , Paris (…Because I Am Not Richard Prince) 2010. He is currently a Special Editions resident at the Lower Eastside Print Shop in NYC.