Jim Lee Interviews David Kramer

“…Finding humor buried somewhere in the middle of tragedy is for me, the adage that makes life livable.”

David Kramer, Tough As Nails, 2011, ink and bleach on paper, 26 x 19 ¾ in.  Courtesy of the artist.

In Conversation:  Jim Lee Interviews David Kramer

Jim Lee: Has your work always been occupied by the “good life”?  Because craft seems to be an important element as well…did you grow up building things or did a family member get you started using tools and materials?

David Kramer: My dad used to hand me things and say “fix this.” There were lamps and broken chairs. I guess he knew deep down I wasn’t good for much else.  When I was in art school I started to pick up work painting houses and building things. The money was OK. But I realized the real money there was in running the jobs. When people would ask me to do their apartments, I would sometimes lie and say that I knew how to do whatever they wanted, even if it was over my head. I would figure it out on the fly. I sometimes took a bath on the job but I never found anything that was out of my reach. I always got recommended to the clients friends for other jobs.  I quickly found great irony in my great ability to make peoples homes and furnishing look great while in my house I was mostly using furniture that I had picked up on the street on garbage night. I guess I am always trying to apply that “special something” to my paintings and installations. But I sort of allow myself to have fun while doing it.  I really like making really nice things out of totally shit materials. 

You seem to have a similar approach with your work too. Or am I getting it backwards and you make really nice materials look totally fucked?

JL: I think my work is about blurring the boundary between what is intentional and what is happenstance… the found vs. the created.

I grew up in a small town and did not have a lot of neighbors, so when not playing sports I used to build things from the scraps of wood and various building materials that I would find. It was real makeshift…like I was simply assembling and taking them apart.  After undergrad I worked for a second hand Herman Miller office furniture fabricator–that’s sort of an oxi-moron, second hand Herman Miller?

Anyways, I was a one-man operation working in a small barn, making and refurbishing library and office furniture. There were lots of laminates and bent wood chairs. All of that would appear to inform what I do.

DK: It is always funny to me the giant difference in quality between the level of craftsmanship that I have when I was doing a commercial renovation project and what I have in my studio. And yet there is never a question about devoting all the time and or resources in the world in the studio when building the art things that I am making. It is the look that I am after. 

You could not make your work without all the skills it took to build a Herman Miller.  It is like no one can really curse well or in a really meaningful way without already having a handle on the rest of the vocabulary.  Otherwise you just sound like a moron.  So much of your work is about finding beauty out of the random or discarded. And to me, it is really all about beauty. Or it is beautiful?  When I read your titles the work becomes so complete.  Crawlspace (a black painting seemingly wearing scanty undies) or Fair Warning, (a yellow painting with a big gray fart cloud across the center).  I love them even more. The joke or sentiment completes the work for me. Dirty South is another.

When does the title come into play for you? And does it bother you that this is so important to me when I am appreciating your stuff?

I simply can’t see living without one or the other.

 David Kramer, Facebook Painting, 2011, oil on canvas, 65 x 58 ¼ in. Courtesy of the artist.

JL: You have mentioned my titles being funny- they are usually either a sports reference, a formal indicator, or some sort of euphemism.  I do not know whether Bruce Nauman is known for his titles being funny, but he has a piece called Run from Fear/Fun from Rear.  I thought that was pretty good.

My titles have to evolve with the painting and be a part of the painting.  If one of those quirky titles does not happen naturally, I go with simple descriptors like Untitled (Black Bottom White).  I won’t force the title. If I were to have a child, I do not believe that I would be able to name him or her before they were born.

I would want to experience that unique personality before assigning a name. If a name didn’t come to me, I guess I’d call him or her — Untitled (bald top shorty).  You have good titles but it is obviously the text that kills me.

When I first saw your drawings at Feigen, I think I read every one of them and I was in tears -really funny stuff. Do you think humor transcends? Can a middle-aged woman from the Upper East Side get the same things from your work as I do, or is it a unique experience and that is why it has a lasting power?

Because I am not sure if humor has a lasting strength- does anyone still think Red Skelton is funny?

DK: I was watching and old Ed Sullivan rerun the other night.  I was having a real uncomfortable feeling watching the Red Skelton bit. You make me nervous now with that question…When I was working on those pieces with the typewriter, it was so much about being funny. I was so free and loose with those stories and sometimes I would even laugh out loud alone in my studio.  I always knew I was onto something when that would happen.  In time this collector came by and bought a bunch of them. He told the Feigen guys that he really wanted them to meet me. He was really persistent.  Anyway, one day I went up to a party at his house-like half a floor on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Park. The collector says to me, “where are you from?”  I told him I spent my high school years in New Rochelle.  He was elated. He said he was from Bergen County. Then he asked about my age and college stuff and there were lots of crossovers. He said, “Wow, we have so much in common. I can totally identify with you. I knew we were a lot alike!”  And I said “except you probably have a few more bucks in your checking account!”

JL: It is important that these go beyond one-liners. It is not like you are doing a stand up bit-that would get tired. You just happen to make beautifully succinct drawings with very funny observations, and you are able to deliver a story with great timing that applies to the viewer on multiple levels.  I also love the tragedy.

DK: The old adage that the best jokes contain a nugget of truth…I’m buying that. I think that humor is really important to my work. It is maybe the center point of the program. But I think that finding humor buried somewhere in the middle of tragedy is for me, the adage that makes life livable. Without that release, everything is just plain sad. I tend to think of myself as generally a happy person. And even with that I ask myself “Why, or how, can I possibly be so happy when so much is so fucked up?” I chose a really tough career and my career seems to be always tough and always full of disappointments and frustrations, but I still get up every morning and run to my studio and work like mad with passion and belief.  Am I great for being able to overcome all that adversity? Or am I just an idiot? I find that whole question to be funny.  And to step back even further, I continue to go to work with all this energy and enthusiasm while meanwhile the country is heading down the slippery slope and the rest of the world looks like a tinder box about to go up in flames. And yet I sit here in my studio making little jokes about it that make me laugh. 

So no, my work is not only about humor. It is about everything else all at once.

David Kramer, Champagne of Beer, 2011 ink and gouache on paper, 19.5 x 12 in. Courtesy of the artist. 

JL: Do the images set up the joke or do you start with the joke and then find the appropriate image?

DK: I seem to start with both. Sometimes it is the image, but often it is the sentiment. With the paintings it is almost always about the image and the attempt to recreate something I saw in a photograph. Sometimes I say to myself that I am a bad photo realist. Where or how does your sense of humor fit in in your art making practice?

JL: If I try to be funny it never works out. I would tend to believe that it works the same in my painting practice.  If I set out to add humor to the work, then I imagine that you would simply hear crickets. The humor, if it is there, has to be a natural part of the process. Plus, I feel that my work is perhaps more quirky than funny.  If possible I wish that I could make something really awkward. It is funny to watch people squirm in an uncomfortable situation. I think that is what Andy Kaufman was trying to do. Although, I must admit I do not think Kaufman was terribly funny. When I was younger, I could not watch a sitcom unless it had the laugh track- guess I needed a little help. Now-a-days I don’t think that they use the laugh track. It is great. I can laugh when I want to. I guess we are more sophisticated these days…no need to prompt. I wonder if M*A*S*H would have been funny without the laugh track. 

DK: One time I was in L.A. visiting a friend.  Eventually we wound up with a couple of his friends at this party. There we were, the four of us sitting on someone’s bed in a stranger’s room in Silver Lake.  My friend’s buddy starts telling jokes. Soon everyone in the group starts chiming in with a joke and the jokes work their way around the circle two or three times, skipping me every time. I hate telling jokes. I can never remember them and even if I could, they just seem to ruin what otherwise would be good conversation. So like a lead balloon I just sat there. I kind of felt like a stuffed animal in a kid’s room waiting anxiously for the mother to call the kid down to dinner so I could be left alone. People always tell me they think that I am funny. Sometimes I wonder if by funny they mean “funny” or maybe they really mean funny as in “very difficult person.”

*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC.