„SPRUCED UP“ 2015

a project for anthology 2015 (appearing on longlist)

at CHARLIE SMITH LONDON,336 Old Street, London EC1V 9DR, United Kingdom.

 My work often combines photography and sculpture .This new body of work called „SPRUCED UP“ has its source in photographs of groups of individuals in the early 2oth century. like in this case a group of schoolmates of grammar school in hinterbrühl the 1920thes.It shows how society is using the media to shape an image which is worth to represent the memory of people. unconsciously showing its attitude towards diversity and individuality.I focus on the time,the pose,the character and the projection, which leads me from a past to a present object.

The spruce is a common tree, here in the so called Viennese Woods.
I use it as symbol of time by mixing the structure of the growth rings to the portrait.As if they had constantly expanded the frozen time of the photographic moment.Taking portrait-pictures is not only about freezing time, it is also about freezing somebody in a pose he or she has mostly not chosen on their own.
My intention is to connect with the characters melt the pose and the moment of the photo into a new object,a free standing bas- relief which nearly is flat as the picture,but slightly starting to embody itself behind the pose.! Up to the final stage the characters are changing all the time and interact with my interventions,that are sometimes made with fine brushes and sometimes with chainsaw.      Martin Krammer

work in progress:

"spruced_up"_nr1,2,3,4,...2015, aquarell auf fichte, all about 40x20x3cm.

„ I-I-IDENTI-TY-TY“ 2016

Selfportrait as a party, group of 3 pieces free standing bas-reliefs, watercolor on spruce, 94x79x4CM, 54x39x4CM, 52x47x4CM

Personality is not made from one cast, we are many, always moving, inventios of new constellations. This piece tries to comprehend that circumstance and puts it into a visual correspondence.The space between the three free standing bas reliefs is up to the audience, it is a game with personality traits and the spacial relation swamping the facial expression into ongoing variations of flow. This is not a particular selfportrait or portrait, but examines visualisation of personality as a concept.

„CINEMA PARADISO“ 2015

Watercolor on spruce, 76x49x4CM; 53x20x3CM; 36x19x4CM, group of free standing bas-reliefs

This series is dealing with projection.

Whom do we see when we see somebody? 

Carl Gustav Jung describes projection as a psychic process to attribute the own archetypes to other people or objects.

Is projection ever congruent with self-image? What is real? The surface or the inside? Does it ever fit together?  Authentic or not, it seems that it cannot be congruent. As humans, we all carry the full package of history, personal, cultural and unique. We are walking silver screens to the rest of the world.

Although each of the sculptures is three dimensional, they are very flat like screens and have two autonomous elements. 

Firstly the carved portraits of actors of the movie „Cinema Paradiso“, the frenetic love story for a cinema. Secondly the projected faces of film stills of this movie on the surface of the carving - executed in watercolor technique. These two parts seem to have magnetic attraction, they do not match but they try to find each other. 

Is it the way we want to be  - or the way we want to be seen? Or do we want to see without being? 

Or:„Why do people go to the cinema? What takes them into a darkened room where, for two hours, they watch the play of shadows on a sheet? The search for entertainment? The need for a kind of drug? All over the world there are, indeed, entertainment firms and organizations which exploit cinema and television and spectacles of many other kinds. Our starting point, however, should not be there, but in the essential principles of cinema, which have to do with the human need to master and know the world. I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had.“ (AndrejTarkovsky)

"mugshot of a past future" 2015, 27x17x6CM, aquarell auf fichte

„this work is a free standing bas-relief defining itself trough frames and directions in time and space. A polaroid which the girl is using to cover her face is an unique object as the moment in front of the camera is. But this polaroid is more :It is information and censorship at the same time. The staging is like a mugshot, an an instrument to control und to achieve the maximum of recognition, but in this case its used to create some tiny privat space as well. this work is questioning this ability of photography as a tool of reality and staging . Or put it the other way, a photo is leaving a spacial gap by projection, a hideaway in space that I start to refill with empathy for the personated.The sculpture is almost as flat as a picture but is about to embody.“    Martin Krammer from the statement for the entry of the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize

"remain a miracle" 2015, 54x44x7CM, aquarell auf fichte