From September 10, 2015 to November 11, 2015
Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany
Share
Galerie Tanit – Munich is happy to present “Kramerica!” — David Kramer’s America.
Born in New York in 1963, David Kramer brings us for the first time in Germany paintings, drawings, a film and an installation deriving directly from his world of interests.
His work sits squarely on the fence between a love for American POP art and a darker satire that nervously wakes him up at night and out of his comfortable American dream. Humor in the work comes from the distilling of spoon fed versions of the good life that are served up in advertisements and life-style magazines. Kramer is a child of the 1970’s and grew up in the suburbs of New York City. His home was filled with magazines of that era with their booze and car advertisements that spoke of what life will offer him once he becomes an adult. While the imagery might be recognizable, the text is all Kramer’s own brand of self-aware humor as he confesses his own wanderlust search for the elusive adult life that was promised in these pages.
From back then, Kramer also brings something suburbians – the supposed “Picture perfect American family” – held sacred, the basement bar. His, is not a regular one, it is a VIP bar where everyone becomes VIP once they indulge the specially labeled beers and the boozy conversation in the “privacy” of his own world. This three-dimensional handmade installation from wood and cardboard (Cheap material) invites us to lose an exaggerated pride by “knocking back a few”.
David Kramer’s “Empire” just like his drawings using text and image, but the attenuation of life is set in motion by the changing light and the stream of ships. The film was shot with a surveillance camera, showing the Empire State skyline from afar. Like Warhol’s idea behind his “Empire”, Kramer wants us “to see time go by” but in the age of smartphones and google, he humorously makes a 24 hour cycle into a 4 minutes film piece.
The spectator being accross the river is faced with a sentence representing his hubris desire of being part of this grandiosity, almost out of reach being too fast…too far.
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” – The hymn to freedom, joy and brotherhood – (performed in April 1942 for Hitler’s birthday by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler) is just the cherry on top of this concocted satire.