Friday, January 18, 2013

David Kramer, Epic Memories, and Michael Harrington, Recent Works
Opening Thursday January 24th, 6-9pm

January 24 - February 24, 2013

David Kramer: Epic Memories

For his new exhibition, Epic Memories, four large scale paintings showcase David Kramer’s characteristically deft, expressive and richly colored painting. Combined with his signature incisive and witty text, Kramer’s work evokes an elusive American dream with both irony and yearning. Recalling the gloss and romance of 1970’s print advertising culture from his youth,  Kramer speaks directly to the viewer in some of his most personal work to date, satirizing his own unrequited and boundless desire for things that offer only temporary fulfillment and diversion.

David Kramer was born in NYC where he currently lives and works. Despite his firm East Coast roots, Kramer’s head is constantly looking west toward the setting sun and palm trees of Hollywood and LA. He is the 2012 EESI Award Winner and a 2011 LES Printshop Special
Editions Fellow. Since 2009 he has been a contributor to the NYTimes.com Opiniator Section. Recent shows include “Hangover, Too,” Mulherin and Pollard (NYC 2011), “This Is What Its Like,” Galerie Laurent Godin (Paris 2012) , and “Next Year in Los Angeles,” Torch Gallery (Amsterdam 2012). His drawings are in the collection of the Muse du Pompidou, French
National Museum of Contemporary Art.


Michael Harrington: New Work


In Michael Harrington’s vivid, mysterious and masterfully painted new canvases, the artist places  his iconic male figures in a range of social habitats.  The contemporary working world is reflected in a series of transient interiors and exteriors: hotel rooms, lobbies, boardrooms and barrooms, where men engage in ambiguous social rituals. He also places these elusive characters at leisure in dimly lit motels, South Florida vacation sites, recreational vehicles, and nighttime parking lots.

Harrington's abiding preoccupation is the depiction of the human form occupying suggestive, intimate narratives that invite viewer’s empathy in scenes that are both familiar and enigmatic. Harrington's skillfully applies his representational craft to a broad range of subject matter including cinema, theatre, literature, music, family folklore, and personal memory.

Michael Harrington graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto in 1989. He has exhibited extensively in Canada and the United States. His work has been reviewed in Border Crossings magazine, the Globe and Mail, the Boston Globe and has been reproduced in Harper's magazine. Harrington's work can be found in the collections of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, the Canada Council Art Bank, as well as numerous corporate and private collections in North America and Europe. In 2007 Harrington was awarded a gold medal from the Canadian National Magazine Awards for a painting commissioned by Toro Magazine. He lives and works in Ottawa.