NYAB Event - David Kramer “Summer Rental”

David Kramer “Summer Rental”

Thierry Goldberg

This event has ended.

My wife keeps asking me to fix the screen in the kitchen window. We live on the second floor and mosquitoes seem to like breeding in the airshaft. I told her she should ask the super. He fixes screens for everyone in the building, all of the time. This weekend she went out to Fire Island; A reunion weekend for her old high school friends. I stayed behind in the city and built a screen door for a sculpture /installation I am trying to make. Working in the hot studio and imagining that one summer soon we will have a summer house and spend the entire months of July and August away from it all.

When you stay in the City all summer, you never really seem to get away from the news cycle. Weekend trips to visit friends in the Catskills reminds us of the strange and terrible news of clashes in Gaza and planes being shot out of the sky, mostly because the friends we visit don’t seem to bring up such current events, much less have spare newspapers lying around their cottages. Maybe they all just keep burning their newspapers to start their campfires. Instead of worrying about current events, I wonder to myself if they are making s’mores 7 days a week when they are up there? Or are the s’mores just for the guests and for the weekends?

Last summer I shortened our family vacation because I had to prepare for a show in September. That one was in Beirut, and I spent the summer paying unbelievably close attention to the news on the radio, fearing greatly the situation next door in Syria would flair up and I would not go. Ancient history now. Even those paying attention to the News this summer are mostly not keeping up on the Chemical Weapons’ stashes over in Syria. There are bigger fish to fry this year. Another summer, and another news cycle that beats a steady drumbeat. And this summer, another show for September, and another opportunity to bend my family vacation around a busy schedule. One of these days, we are definitely going to run away and get away from it all, the way summer was supposed to be.

Summer Rental is a new installation of Paintings and Sculptures, revolving around two themes. Works made in and about living in this City at this particular moment. And the other theme is the escape. The place to go and rest up and get away from it all.

I am, as I write this, getting ready to finally fix the screen on the kitchen window, and thinking vigorously about making a September Escape, to make up for August. Not only am I planning to totally make an escape, but I will also be taking full advantage of the off-season rates when I finally get there.

- David Kramer