Daniel Gustav Cramer
30 Oct - 23 Dec 2009
DANIEL GUSTAV CRAMER
Twelve Works
October 30, 2009 - December 23, 2009
Vera Cortes, Lisbon is pleased to present Twelve Works by Daniel Gustav Cramer (born 1975). This is Cramer ́s second solo exhibition in the gallery. He will present twelve works including photographs , time based works (video and sound pieces), books and paper collages. He has just returned form a six months residency in Melbourne, Australia, which followed a fellowship at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Art, Oxford University, in England.
Cramer ́s works and installations are driven by a visual and conceptual poetics locating man in his surrounding, in relation to time, space and emotion. In his observations his view is strangely detached as if it is not him who observes but „a camera“. Often these works appear quiet and reduced, but they turn personal and intimate once the viewer explores the point of entry.
One of the first works which is visible when entering the gallery is a photograph of Stonehenge in the countryside of England. The photograph is small, just a little bit bigger than a postcard. In a far distance one can see a tiny gathering of stones standing isolated by themselves, surrounded by grasing sheeps, cars reflect the sunlight on a highway nearby. The stones feel dislocated up on a hill - of a different time, somehow misunderstood. Nevertheless they are still there in silent harmony and eternal communication with the rising sun, the drifting moon and the stars above.
On another photograph in the exhibition a spider web taken in New Zealand ́s forests seems infinite in size, reminiscence rather of a galaxy than the home of a singular insect. Although those two images are different in their appearance and in their subject, they hint at similar questions of time, space, form and how things relate to each other.
In June Cramer flew to the Wolfe Creek Crater in Australia ́s desert to document it during sunset. The plane circled around the crater over and over again. In the video the crater ́s appearance establishes a circular shape in constant motion, nothing in the image is still except the composition itself. The crater moves in full circle, like the hand of a clock or like the earth ́s journey around the sun – like a spider building its own web.
An installation of sculptures is placed aside two photograph showing groups of people gathering at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969 to watch the take-off of Apollo 11. It was the first manned lunar landing mission, with the crew being Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin Jr.
The central work of the show is a series of 20 photographs of an old man fishing at the sea. He is sitting on a rock looking at his fishing rod while time passes by. Eventually, he stands up, takes his rod and leaves. On the last photorgaphs of the series the man is gone, and all that is visible is the moving sea, the rock and the traces left in the sand. This work taking on the classical theme of the man and the sea, focusses on time, fragmented into a staccato of moments, and on the man ,being in this time, passing through it, leaving finite traces behind.
In Cramer ́s work, everything relates: a minute fragment, the gesture of a hand, a planet moving through space. The works feel like reminders or markers bringing the viewer back to essential questions relating to existence and being: who am I? what do I know? How do I relate to you, the other, the world surrounding me? What does it mean to me that all my traces, all our traces will be erased?
Daniel Gustav Cramer studied at the Royal College of Art, Lon¬don and recently took part in the Athens Biennale. This year he has shown in several exhibitons including FormContent and Jerwood Space in London, BolteLang Gallery in Zurich, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri and Micamoca in Berlin, Tulips and Roses in Vilnius, Blind Spot Lab in New York, Rodeo in Istanbul, Maisterravalbuena in Madrid and Nada in Miami. His recent projects include The Infinite Library in collaboration with Haris Epaminonda and Loch Ness.
Javier Folkenborn, September 2009
Twelve Works
October 30, 2009 - December 23, 2009
Vera Cortes, Lisbon is pleased to present Twelve Works by Daniel Gustav Cramer (born 1975). This is Cramer ́s second solo exhibition in the gallery. He will present twelve works including photographs , time based works (video and sound pieces), books and paper collages. He has just returned form a six months residency in Melbourne, Australia, which followed a fellowship at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Art, Oxford University, in England.
Cramer ́s works and installations are driven by a visual and conceptual poetics locating man in his surrounding, in relation to time, space and emotion. In his observations his view is strangely detached as if it is not him who observes but „a camera“. Often these works appear quiet and reduced, but they turn personal and intimate once the viewer explores the point of entry.
One of the first works which is visible when entering the gallery is a photograph of Stonehenge in the countryside of England. The photograph is small, just a little bit bigger than a postcard. In a far distance one can see a tiny gathering of stones standing isolated by themselves, surrounded by grasing sheeps, cars reflect the sunlight on a highway nearby. The stones feel dislocated up on a hill - of a different time, somehow misunderstood. Nevertheless they are still there in silent harmony and eternal communication with the rising sun, the drifting moon and the stars above.
On another photograph in the exhibition a spider web taken in New Zealand ́s forests seems infinite in size, reminiscence rather of a galaxy than the home of a singular insect. Although those two images are different in their appearance and in their subject, they hint at similar questions of time, space, form and how things relate to each other.
In June Cramer flew to the Wolfe Creek Crater in Australia ́s desert to document it during sunset. The plane circled around the crater over and over again. In the video the crater ́s appearance establishes a circular shape in constant motion, nothing in the image is still except the composition itself. The crater moves in full circle, like the hand of a clock or like the earth ́s journey around the sun – like a spider building its own web.
An installation of sculptures is placed aside two photograph showing groups of people gathering at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969 to watch the take-off of Apollo 11. It was the first manned lunar landing mission, with the crew being Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin Jr.
The central work of the show is a series of 20 photographs of an old man fishing at the sea. He is sitting on a rock looking at his fishing rod while time passes by. Eventually, he stands up, takes his rod and leaves. On the last photorgaphs of the series the man is gone, and all that is visible is the moving sea, the rock and the traces left in the sand. This work taking on the classical theme of the man and the sea, focusses on time, fragmented into a staccato of moments, and on the man ,being in this time, passing through it, leaving finite traces behind.
In Cramer ́s work, everything relates: a minute fragment, the gesture of a hand, a planet moving through space. The works feel like reminders or markers bringing the viewer back to essential questions relating to existence and being: who am I? what do I know? How do I relate to you, the other, the world surrounding me? What does it mean to me that all my traces, all our traces will be erased?
Daniel Gustav Cramer studied at the Royal College of Art, Lon¬don and recently took part in the Athens Biennale. This year he has shown in several exhibitons including FormContent and Jerwood Space in London, BolteLang Gallery in Zurich, Galerie Mehdi Chouakri and Micamoca in Berlin, Tulips and Roses in Vilnius, Blind Spot Lab in New York, Rodeo in Istanbul, Maisterravalbuena in Madrid and Nada in Miami. His recent projects include The Infinite Library in collaboration with Haris Epaminonda and Loch Ness.
Javier Folkenborn, September 2009