Jesse Krimes at The Met

Jesse Krimes at The Met

JESSE KRIMES AT THE MET
Highlighting the ART FOR CHANGE artist’s museum show

 
Installation image from Jesse Krimes: Corrections at The Met.

Jesse Krimes is an artist whose work explores societal mechanisms of power and control with a focus on criminal and racial justice. His work often investigates both his own experience with incarceration and the experiences of the millions of others who are currently behind bars. Working to counteract the dehumanizing, degrading, and isolating effects of prison, he works collaboratively with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, by integrating fragments of their old clothing, textiles, and other ephemera into his works.

In Jesse Krimes: Corrections, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art now until July 13, 2025, Krimes’ image-based installations employ prison-issued soap, hair gel, playing cards, and newspaper that seek to recontextualize and disrupt the circulation of photographs in media. In Krimes’ 2023 ART FOR CHANGE print, Blackwater, the artist similarly focused on the absence of symbols of Americana that have been forgotten or cast aside, incorporating similar themes of recidivism and a surveillance state.

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JESSE KRIMES
Blackwater, 2023
21.5 x 19 inches
Hand-transferred print on prison bedsheet

Limited Edition of 25 with 5AP + 1PP
Hand-embellished, signed and numbered by the artist
Starting at $3,000

SHOP THE PRINT

Blackwater is from his Elegy Quilt series, which incorporates memories or feelings of home described by currently incarcerated people. In the Elegy series, antique chairs sit empty, evoking both absence and symbols of Americana that have been forgotten and cast aside. Krimes harnesses the power of absence to reassert the humanity of his unseen subjects. Portraying the homes of people who are incarcerated is an affirmation that they once lived in community with the free world and that many of them will return home. The frames are not entirely empty of life, however: animal figures loom or confront the viewer directly, suggesting a panoptic state of surveillance and alluding to American zoology’s troubled history of eugenicist and white supremacist ideas. Krimes has created each hand-transferred print for ART FOR CHANGE on prison bedsheets and embellished each work through a combination of hand embroidery, sewing on remnants of fabric from the original quilted work, and hand-drawing or painting over the print, making each print unique.

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Jesse Krimes pictured hand-embellishing his print, Blackwater.

ART FOR CHANGE will donate $500 from each print sale towards the Brooklyn Museum to help bolster the annual gala's aim of raising critical funding to help the institution fulfill its mission to be a home for inspiring art and courageous conversations. In keeping with all of our releases, the artist will receive 50% of the net proceeds from each print sale.

SHOP THE PRINT

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Detail image of Jesse Krimes’ ART FOR CHANGE print, Blackwater.

Of his print, Blackwater, benefitting the Brooklyn Museum, Krimes notes “The Brooklyn Museum was the first major museum to acquire my work for its permanent collection. I see this as a reflection of their sustained commitment to opening doors that have traditionally been closed to marginalized artists—including formerly incarcerated people. The Brooklyn Museum exemplifies a commitment to building an inclusive community, both in the surrounding borough and in the art world. It is rare to find institutions that are authentically focusing on advancing social good and are also showcasing top-tier artworks.”

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

Jesse Krimes is a Philadelphia-based artist and curator whose work explores how contemporary media shapes and reinforces societal mechanisms of power and control, with a particular focus of criminal and racial justice. Shortly after graduating from Millersville University, he was indicted by the U.S. government on drug charges. While serving a six-year prison sentence he produced and smuggled out numerous bodies of work, established prison art programs, and formed artist collectives. After his release, he co-founded Right of Return USA, the first and only national fellowship dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated artists.

Krimes’ work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Philadelphia Museum of Art, International Red Cross Museum, Zimmerli Museum, and Aperture Gallery. His curatorial practice is focused on elevating other system impacted artists, and he also successfully led a class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for charging formerly incarcerated people predatory fees after their release from federal prison.

Krimes was awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, Art for Justice Fund, Independence Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. His work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, OZ Art NWA, Kadist Art Foundation, The Bunker Artspace, and the Agnes Gund Collection. He is represented by Malin Gallery in New York.

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