Artist Jesse Krimes lets his materials take center stage

Jesse Krimes vividly recalls the moment he chose to be an artist. During a year in solitary confinement, while awaiting sentencing on nonviolent drug-related charges, he had a life-defining realization: No matter what, he was going to be an artist.

“I decided early on that I was going to make the most of every minute I had [in prison]— whether I get five years, 20 years, or life — to create something positive in the world,” Krimes told me recently art news. “Everything about me can be taken away from me, except my ability to create.”

Prior to being indicted, Krimes earned a BFA from Millersville University in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he developed a keen interest in conceptual art and an extensive exploration of materials— He continued to perfect this approach during his six years of service. The prison sentence comes despite facing significant restrictions on access to traditional art materials.

purgatory (2009), one of his most ambitious installations to date, was created while in solitary confinement, in which he used hairspray and toothpaste to manually transfer newspaper images of individuals labeled as criminals onto 292 bars of prison-issued soap. Bars of soap were then embedded into engraved playing cards to examine a range of issues, including fate and the many failures of the American justice system. It is the centerpiece of Krimes’ current survey “Correction” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (on view until July 13).

book Staying put: Art in the age of mass incarcerationWriter and curator Nicole R. Fleetwood reflects on the significance of the materials Krimes chose for purgatory. “In his use of material, Krimes refers to the concept of confession, from which the first prisons emerged, and to the colonial and racist violence of governments forcing captive and colonized people to use soap. Soap represents The history of racialized pathologies and notions of imperial and institutional cleanliness,” she writes.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, purgatory Conversation with a series of photographs of suspected anarchists taken by French police officer Alphonse Bertillon in the 1890s. Exhibition curator Lisa Sutcliffe said she admired the artist’s extraordinary ability to creatively use available resources while considering the deeper meanings they conveyed. “and [Krimes]the choice of each material is regulated,” she said.

His meticulous approach to materiality is further reflected in Apokaluptin: 16389067 (2010-13), another large installation not far away purgatory In the metropolis. It also took Krimes three years to complete while incarcerated, and it consists of 39 transparent prison sheets so thin they look more like veils than bedding. Krimes worked an average of 12 hours a day on a makeshift table made of wood and ceramic tile by inmates to complete the 40-foot-wide mural. For each panel, the artist uses hairspray and a spoon to transfer the image from the panel new york times On the sheet, blending figures and filling in the gaps with colored pencils creates a stunning landscape that suggests heaven, earth, and hell.

Although Krims had access to linens during his time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Felton, New Jersey, he chose to use the sheets instead apocalypse. This choice, he says, is crucial to the conceptual dimension of his work. “I wanted to use prison materials against myself because they were produced in UNICOR using prison labor,” Krimes explains. (UNICOR is a federal corporation and as of 2021, the minimum wage is $0.23 per hour and the highest wage positions only reach $1.15 per hour).

“exist Apokaluptin: 16389067 (2010-13), Krimes was thinking about hierarchies of power and the legacy of slavery,” said Sutcliffe. “Using these sheets as material was a clear choice, given the conditions under which the incarcerated people were making them, Make this conversation a core part of the job. “

Krimes created another monumental installation, naxos island (2024), for the Met exhibition. Composed of more than 9,000 pebbles collected from prison yards by Krimes and numerous other incarcerated people from across the country, Krimes hand-wrapped and hung each pebble by individual threads that contained an image transfer Revelation. “If you take the original Revelation Then pull a thread out of it,” he said, “and the exact color markings on that thread will be the same as the hanging pebbles. naxos island“.

Krimes began collecting rocks in the prison yard after reading a passage from Carl Jung’s book. undiscovered self. “There’s a saying about the average weight of a pebble,” he explains, “and if you really look for that pebble, you’ll probably never find it, and I think that’s a beautiful way of capturing uniqueness and personality. Systems and structures and how we actually build things.”

later formed encased pebbles naxos island The process is “mostly meditative,” Krims said. After his release from prison, he continued to collect stones and expanded his collection, relying on the support of countless incarcerated people.

Because Krimes initially had no idea whether or how these pebbles would form the basis of a larger work, Krimes describes the process as organic and intuitive. “Sometimes I come across a material or object and I connect with it on a deep level but I don’t know why, and then I sit with it until I find out why,” he says.

Sutcliffe recalls seeing the hanging wrapped pebbles in Krims’s studio and being “struck by their elegant simplicity.” “They seemed to serve as individual stand-ins while collectively alluding to the idea of ​​mass incarceration.”

Surprisingly, the constraints of the prison system became such an important source of creativity for Krims that “he continued to work on making art after his release because the constraints of making art in prison fueled his creativity, ” Fleetwood was introduced.

but naxos island shows how Krimes emerged from this artistic struggle and returned to his belief in the power of materials to realize his vision. “My bottom line is, whatever concept I’m trying to convey, or whatever idea I’m working on, I need materials to complement that concept — they can’t just be arbitrary,” he said.