McDermott & McGough / Loren Kramar

"He comes to mind as handsomer now that my soul evokes him out of time."

— Cavafy

Three men in a pool, wearing bathing suits and beatific expressions. The blonde in front turns his head. A man in gold smokes a cigarette at the porthole, lips pursed, his eyes cast down. The stern of the boat, a whale, two figures almost touching. They are all young and beautiful. The Ship, McDermott & McGough’s suite of five watercolor paintings, presents us with a series of vignettes in the romantic vernacular of luxury’s great Golden Age, that of the Ocean-Liner-cum-Grand-Hotel. Dated to 1938, these paintings exist outside of time. They are documents of a past both real and imaginary: a private world defined by discrete glances and coded conceits.

Kramar’s work overloads the eye. They slip between drawing and collage, combining saturated marker with inlays of glitter, colored paper, photographs, overheard conversations, and recorded notes. Each piece is crammed with images of desire. But they are more than a collection of nice things. There is an alchemical reaction happening. Images crystalize, and the remembered afternoon lives on forever.

Memories are unreliable, anyway, only fixing once they exaggerate, gloss, and reform the moment into a discrete and powerful talisman. These images, lodged in our hearts, become truth that transcend reality (for better or for worse). And no matter what truths we use to cement our identities — be it the Founding Fathers, or Christ on the cross, or a youth emerging, dripping, from a blue pool — the fantasy is always true, the fantasy is me, the fantasy is you.