Guilherme Kramer – [ HUMANHOOD ]

PRESS RELEASE

GUILHERME KRAMER
= POETA URBANO (Urban Poet)

[ HUMANHOOD ]
27 / 09 – 30 / 11 / 2013

“I am an explorer: in details of expression, reflecting into the concrete and the abstract, drawing upon the human condition. I meet with the chaos, the brutality, the urban poetry, the crowd and the identity within the masses. My drawing is a kind of creation machine.”

Brazilian urban artist GUILHERME KRAMER was born in São Paulo, and now currently lives and works in Barcelona. From 2006 to 2011, Guilherme Kramer participated in exhibitions in Rome, Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Bogotá, Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro and Bern, Switzerland, and worked as Scenographer for a dance performance in New York.

For toof [ contemporary ]’s second exhibition, Kramer arrives in Hong Kong with four series of small paintings painted this year, and an immense passion to produce more artwork. At the private view, he will be creating a mural-sized painting to include signed-up guests who are attending the private view, which will be the backdrop to the newly opening artichoke CANTEEN attached to the gallery.

Though the paintings are born from his year-long project “We See People in the Crowd” and “Con La Gente Que Me Gusta” (Spanish for ‘With the People That I like’), the paintings show the range of influences that has affected him over his whole life. In continuation with our last two artists, Guilherme Kramer is also one to see individuals in crowds, playing tribute to qualities that make people unique. With the intention to build on a subject over a longer period of time, he spent hours on public transport, on the street, at popular festivals, protests, and in crowds. “Being in a different culture, helped to find new faces and expressions” says Kramer. We need only to heighten our sensitivity and look closer, to notice what lies beneath our numbed impressions of the public en masse.

Without restrictions to the surfaces he uses, his illustrations and iconic uplifting style has been painted on walls in gardens, GLASS, rocks, ceramics, furniture, skateboards, and is continually commissioned to brighten up spaces from derelict communities to workaholic commercial environments.

www.guilhermekramer.com

DESCRIPTIONS TO BE PRINTED NEXT TO THE PAINTINGS

(eg: “Historical Spain and Brazil”)
Series 1 is beset with references to the colonial history of Brazil and Spain, with warm orange and ochre tones that highlight the stark monochromatic shapes. Though memories of the past are unforgettable, they are given a chance to be colour the culture of the two countries today. Kramer’s vivid playful shapes and curves tease and jest with the viewer. There are hints of influences from Picasso and his Cubist philosophy.

(eg: “FREAKADELKALIC”)
Series 2 fully exposes Kramer’s taste for the wonderfully strange ‘theatre of existence’ that can be found in every urban city. The caricatured folk gesture towards the viewer and express a desire to greet, communicate and connect with those outside the picture frame. Their internal projections and unconscious desires leak out of their heads and disperse into the atmosphere around them.

(eg: “Those who want to be heard”)
Series 3 paints a variety of mixed, multicultural crowds. Each figure has their own set of features, but at times, certain individuals stand out more than others. Kramer often paints from his memory, which shows how intensely he observes the crowd when he’s collecting the visual information that he then translates into his styled creations.

(eg: “Journeying from my private life to public space”)
Series 4 contains paintings with his trademark representations of oxygen-free, ultra-condensed crowds, all too familiar to Hong Kong commuters who use trains and buses at rush hour. From the top of a Hong Kong tram, you see people the size of ants, in contrast to the size of people’s eyes when they are standing pressed up right next to you. It is interesting when comparing the value we give personal space when on public transport than when we choose to group together in a protest or for a petition to have our voices heard and fight for a singular purpose.