I was at an opening the other night. I ran into this friend of mine. She is a painter and when I saw her she was chatting with this other guy who I found out is a painter too. So this woman says to us, "You know, all three of us where all in the same show together once..." And it turned out to be true. Back in the summer of 1995 we'd all been in a big group show at a gallery called
K and E on Broome Street in SoHo. It was a show called HOT.
I showed a big flashing sign that said the word SEXY on the floor made with wood and painted metal and light bulbs.
.At the time all of my work was letters and words. Giant welded steel sentences that said things like, "NICE GUYS FINISH LAST..." over and over again. Collages with torn photos and rub on letters.
The director of the gallery really liked my work. We'd done a show together already and she told
me she really wanted to keep working together, but the owner of the gallery didn't like the work.
She told me my work was "too abstract."
TOO ABSTRACT!?!
It was all words and letters! There was nothing abstract about it.

Anyway I bring this up because I was talking to a friend of mine last night who was sort of considering all of the work in my show up at A.Bartos. So this guys says,"You know, the only piece in the show that doesn't have any words is the Van Gogh painting..."
Which is sort of true except for the furniture and wall pieces etc. But the funny part was
for some reason my immediate response was,
"...The Applause Sign doesn't have any words, either!"
See. I guess I'm not so smart after all.
DK

Nice review

Here is a link to a nice review for my show
at A.Bartos FA.
Please check it out....
http://artcards.cc/review/david-kramer-romanticizing-his-limits/794/

Written by Helen Homan Wu. I think she likes it.

ALSO
here are some images recently sent to me from the gallery:

BEACH WEEKEND with Friends

I spent the weekend at the beach. A friend's beach house. There with our friends and and their friends,
a large group of almost twenty adults and kids. It is difficult enough for me to navigate living in a house with anyone else (i.e. my wife and kid) but somehow I managed the weekend with four other families and their rules and regulations and behaviors.

Of course, as you can imagine, at a certain point the subject of parenting actually came up and was discussed, open for review. Everyone had opinions on how to do it, and had no trouble expressing them. I am kind of an unusual parent in that I will openly admit from time to time that parenting is hard, if not impossible. Having a kid has really only taught me one thing about my own up bringing: that my parents were terrible parents. Nice people, but TERRIBLE parents. I didn't learn anything.

So somehow we all got onto the topic of our kid's cursing and fouled mouths and I admitted that
just because I have a kid I haven't stopped myself from cursing at all. I actually like cursing as I think it adds flavor to any dull conversation. And I admitted that I didn't really mind so much at all that my son was developing a potty mouth too. I was only concerned that he used his curses well. Economically. I just want him to be able to curse with a flourish, Then no one would complain as they would be charmed by the great use of language.

Anyway, as I said there were other families around. Families that seemed as comfortable with praying before dinner as I am with telling my son to "get his ass in bed before I come in there and beat the crap out of him!"
I could tell that I was making some folks blush. But it wasn't for affect, I swear. I was only sharing my parenting secrets.

Anyway, later at dinner on one of the nights there, we all got to talking about our kids again
and I was saying that my son had recently become very interested in this lousy Mel Brooks movie, SPACEBALLS.
THis was a shitty spoof of the Star Wars series and it was not only not funny but really probably the most shameful moment in Brooks' career. Everyone at the table agreed. So I announced that I had recently told my son that I was going to show him BLAZING SADDLES as he aught to at least be taught what a good Mel Brooks film looks like at home. He shouldn't have to learn this stuff on the street.
Well, one of the parents sent her wine flying through her nose and I was suddenly silenced by a wave of coughing that drowned out my my educational thesis.

I think that I learned something of great value here which of course like all good lessons is nothing new, just the stating of the most obvious. Those who can't do teach. Those who do, do. And it is best to keep your mouth shut when it is obvious to everyone that you have absolutely no idea what it is that you are doing.
DK

The Opening Was Great

The show at Armand Bartos Fine Art is great. The opening was a lot of fun.I was super happy with the crowd. So many great people. I couldn't help myself so much so that I burst into song!

DK


Here's a link:
http://www.flipshare.com/view.aspx?nRecipient=&nFrame=NmUxOWJhNmYtYTcyNC00NDgyLTk4YWQtMGU2Mzc2NTYyNmNi&nMedia=ODAyNjRkZTAtZjQ2NS00NDU4LWFhY2ItZDdkZDhlMjhmNzkw&nT=2267712027260790

UP COMING GROUP SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT

Motion Deconstructed
Private View June 9th, 6:30 – 9:00 PM, at the Classic Car Club, a show curated by Gary Krimershmoys of Quintessentially Art
I love my automobile..she is my life, my artistic and spiritual life..full of riches..she is more dear, more useful, more full of education than my library, where the closed books sleep on their spines, than my paintings, which hang dead on my walls all around me, with their immobile shy, tree, water and figures..
Octave Mirbeau, La 628-E8, 1908
Art and the automobile are two of the most luxurious, aspirational and divisive objects in humanity’s recent history. At the Motion Deconstructed show, we would like to invite you to take a contemporary look at what art can say about the automobile’s place in a modern society.
Motion Deconstructed deals with the myriad of ways society fetishizes the beauty of the car, uses it as a status symbol and makes it one of the primary materialistic goals of people’s labours, but without bypassing its dark side as a clogger of streets and junkyards. Here you will not find traditional scenes in automotive art depicting race cars going around racetracks or shining as they park on a well manicured lawn. The themes of beauty and banality that are present in automobiles, juxtaposed with the auto-exotica in the Club, should make the viewer question what the connection of art and the mechanized society in motion means.
Classic Car Club is an ideal venue to show the physical link between art and cars, a much more evocative place then the traditional white box of the gallery. The group exhibition will showcase the work of Indira Cesarine, Lawrence Heller, David Kramer, Oksana Mas, John Melville, Kimberly du Ross, and Aaron Young.
Location: Classic Car Club, 250 Hudson Street, NYC http://classiccarclubmanhattan.com/
To RSVP or for further information on Motion Deconstructed and the artists at the exhibition, contact Gary Krimershmoys or Lara Lorenzana at artny@quintessentially.com. And check out Quintessentially Art’s broad range of services at www.quintessentiallyart.com