Big Log Seating Arrangement + drawings

I am packing up works to go to Miami/Basel.
Including some excellent new chairs that I made. The "bark" on these logs are actually cardboard. Recycled baby!

Anyway- If you are down there, in Miami, these will be with
Galerie Laurent Godin. Come over and have a seat!
DK

and another

Jewish Santa

Here's a recent story.......

The City of Lights vs The Melting Pot.

Back in June when I went to France for the first time I wasn't drinking or smoking. It was a difficult trip. The weather was perfect and everyone in Paris seemed to be sitting out doors on the sidewalks drinking beers and espressos and smoking away. Believe me when I say it was kind of sad to be not joining in. In the past when I traveled to do a show, I would drink and smoke as much as I wanted. After all, alcohol and nicotene were ingredients there to help me cook up what ever I was to be making over there (not to mention using them as reliable crutches for whenever the stress level hit high). But I was committed to my clean living ways as I had been so sick when my liver stopped working. I didn't really even want to go back there. I was comfortable with myself, just as I was comfortable with the French for living the way that they did. The people I was working with all smoked and drank. And I was happy to be there hanging around with them.

One time I was asked to join some friends for dinner. I met the wife of one of my friends who noticed that I wasn't joining in with the festivities as it were.
"You don't drink or smoke cigarettes?" she asked. I explainedf that I had been very ill, and that it just didn't feel right to be doing that stuf right now. "Well thank god" she said. SHe said she was afraid that I was "One of those Americans" who were all fucking rightous about these things. I said "No." I am not like that. In fact, I am down right forgiving about that stuff. Come over to my studio and feel free to smoke. You can even ash right on the floor. I sill don't smoke or drink very much any more. I will now, have an occasional glass of wine. And I still day dream about when I will finally have clocked enough years in my life to take up smoking again in my sprint towards the finish line.

The other day I was on the subway. I was having enough trouble readjusting to being back in New York after a second trip to France this summer. I looked up and saw a poster of a glass brimming over like a head of frosty bubbles of a just poured beverage. But it was not bubbles that I was looking at, but a glass full of fat. The poster was designed to get you to drink water instead of sugary drinks! Yeech.
I fucking hate Mike Bloomberg and his self rightous benevolent despot routine. I want to move back to France.
DK

Some Pictures

Here are some installation shots from my exhibit-
OUTSIZING THE DOWNSIZE
from the DOCK ART FAIR in Lyon, France (September).
Viva la France!

http://www.laurentgodin.com/artists_detail.php?id_artiste=22

French wine

French Wine
or
On Getting Some Teeth Back

Right before I left for France I had a physical at my doctor's office. It was funny to see my doctor because once I saw him prior to all of my health issues of last year, and proudly had told him about my drinking and smoking at the time. I remember he asked me if I was a smoker and I told him then that I was smoking only about a half a dozen or so cigarettes in a day which I meant as a sign of my control of the situation." Well" he said, "most people try to quit at your age..." I didn't get his drift at the time, but when he asked me how much I drank, he almost fell out of his chair when I reported that I drank about a six -pack a night.
I don't know why, but the thing that I remember most was his asking "what brand" I was drinking. Maybe he was after some kind of stock tip but none-the- less, after my then-physical, all of my numbers where totally normal and I was in tremendous health. Then, of course, my health took a nosedive and the rest was history.
Anyway- so I went to see my doctor last week and this is a guy who was very familiar with my health issues and my drinking habits. But he told me that despite all of my clean living over the past year or so, the liver issues that I had had (which are now over with thank god) managed to screw up my #'s and my cholesterol was suddenly through the roof and I had not done any of the things that one normally does to throw the balance off like gain a shit load of weight all of a sudden.
So my doctor told me all about all of my food and diet and exercise stuff that I needed to be doing and then he said,
"You should probably have a glass of red wine every couple of days..." Well, he did not have to suggest that twice. I never really liked wine all that much but it sounded like a plan. SO I went out with my wife for a drink and we had one and that was great and now I am enjoying the health benefits of some good positive anti-oxidants.
Anyway- so I have been in France for over a week now. And I must say it is very enjoyable to
be here and not all that wrapped up in the saying no to all of the things that I would have been over doing in the past.
I still have to make myself say no to cigarettes, which is just about the unfair thing in the world. And I pass on the
beer and booze, but give myself a glass of the old red every once in a while.
Last night I went out to dinner with a bunch a people and we were in Lyon for this excellent art fair (which is going pretty well by the way) and we were starving because we'd been working like mad. So the guy who is paying for dinner orders me an appetizer of foie gras and big plate of frogs' legs. Listen...it was fucking delicious but if I am going to keep eating like this, I don't care how much red wine and leafy green vegetables I eat, my cholesterol is going out of sight.
I just want to know how to say Lipator in French.
DK

Off to Paris/Lyon

I am please do announce that I am leaving for Paris in the morning to
work on an installation for the Docks Art Fair in Lyon.
The Docks Fair is particularly exciting because it opening coincides with the
opening of the French Bianalli also in Lyon.

Anyway- I have many exciting new works to show and
a large installation to realize while in Paris.

All the best,
Dk
Docks Art Fair, Lyon
DAVID KRAMER
Outsizing the Downsize
Another swank modernist apartment built out of shit materials
14 - 20 septembre 2009
Vernissage le lundi 14 septembre

http://2009.docksartfair.com/

David Kramer est né en 1963 sur une petite île au large des Etats-Unis. De son perchoir à New York, l'artiste s'amuse de l'impalpabilité démesurée du rêve américain. Cela étant, David Kramer aspire à une fin hollywoodienne tout aussi insaisissable, une fin qui règle les problèmes et satisfait tous les désirs.
Pour Docks, David Kramer transforme le stand en un environnement domestique confortable, à l'image de ceux publiés dans les magazines d'art de vivre. Toutefois l'oeuvre de l'artiste reste une contrefaçon « faîte-maison », réalisée avec des matériaux pauvres, offrant ainsi une preuve concrète que les choses entraperçues dans les magazines existent réellement.

Cet environnement sert de toile de fond aux dessins de Kramer, inspirés des réclames issues de l'âge d'or du rêve américain, une époque optimiste mais révolue. Avec des clins d'oeil satiriques, l'artiste incorpore ses propres vérités à l'intérieur de concepts pré-formatés, et s'accroche à l'idée très romantique qu'un jour il se réveillera, et que ses désirs seront devenus réalité.

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David Kramer was born in 1963 on a small island off the coast of the USA. From his perch in NYC, Kramer makes quips at what he sees as the outsized impossibility of the American Dream. That said, Kramer yearns for the equally evasive Hollywood ending that will solve all of the problems and fulfill the desires.
For Docks, David Kramer builds a comfortable domestic environment as he has seen in numerous lifestyle magazines. But Kramer's construction is a low-budget facsimile built with cheap materials, that provides him proof positive that these things seen in magazines actually do exist.
This setting serves as a backdrop to Kramer's drawings, which depict ads from a past, and more optimistic era in American advertising. Using satirical insights, the artist tries to place his own realities into the packaged dreams, while trying to hang onto the romantic notion that one day he will wake up and his dreams really will have come true.