Russell Craig and Jesse Krimes

Show Me A Hero features four large-scale works from Krimes' celebrated Elegy Quilts series. These quilts function as a type of portrait of individuals who are incarcerated. Krimes speaks to the subjects extensively regarding their memories of home and their conceptions of safety in a domestic environment. Krimes then uses a combination of antique quilt fragments and textiles along with materials owned by the individuals, such as used clothing or upholstery, to render intricate images inspired by the subjects' thoughts and memories. The individuals themselves are not directly depicted. Instead, their physical absence is referenced by an empty chair or other empty piece of furniture - yielding what Krimes' describes as "portraits through absence." By utilizing the individuals' own clothing and textiles, Krimes employs the concept of topographical reliquary, which stipulates that an object’s “meaning” is partially determined by its site of origination.

The exhibition also debuts a new series of textile works that incorporate Krimes' use of quilting and image transfer with meticulous embroidery. The intricate imagery in these works is largely inspired by pre-enlightenment religious, philosophical and historical texts, with the artist suggesting echoes of the Medieval era within our own fraught cultural moment. Visual elements are inspired by the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts and 19th century natural history studies. Krimes notes that this new body of work is largely driven by "critical analysis of the historical roots of white supremacy, pre-enlightenment theology and the evolving relationship between church and state," noting that he "recontextualizes these histories and overlays them with the present, weaving in art historical representations of power and containment." With his newfound engagement with highly-detailed embroidery, Krimes continues his prototypical approach to materiality as personal and historical record, commenting that, "Unlike painting, which is applied to a surface, embroidery is a process of inscription involving piercing, marking and confining an image within the body of a fabric."