Crushes
Solo exhibition by Greg Climer, September 5 - September 28
MAG Galleries, San Francisco

Crushes revisits the electric uncertainty of queer adolescence through stitched memory and coded desire. In this series of quilted portraits and textile works, Greg Climer reconstructs the visual language of high school infatuations, drawing on the glossy optimism of 1990s gay youth magazines like XY, and the secret longings woven into teenage bedrooms, gym locker rooms, and yearbook margins.

Working across handcraft and digital tools—including AI-generated imagery, engineered prints, and animation—Climer’s practice mines the tension between what was hidden and what was hoped for. His subjects, often imagined or remembered crushes, are rendered with tenderness, ambiguity, and intensity. By layering traditional quiltmaking techniques with contemporary technology, Climer creates portraits that feel at once intimate and impossible—memorials to boys we barely spoke to, fantasies that flickered in silence, and the queer utopias we dared to dream alone.

The show includes work created over a ten-year period. At its core lies Climer’s long-standing fascination with adolescent desire—particularly the quiet ache of high school crushes. This theme deepened after a personal pilgrimage to Laramie, Wyoming, site of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. That event left an indelible mark on Climer’s understanding of queer identity, vulnerability, and the high stakes of simply being seen.

Quilts, traditionally heirlooms passed from one generation to the next, become in Climer’s hands speculative artifacts—offered from a time when such inheritance was unimaginable. When he was a teenager, gay marriage was not yet legal, and the cultural script offered few futures for gay men beyond tragedy or invisibility. There could be no heirs for the heirlooms of a gay man. Today, that narrative has changed. These quilts are more than portraiture—they are totems of survival, tenderness, and possibility. They mark a shift in time, one stitched square at a time. Creating heirlooms implies the existence of heirs. 

Climer’s ambitious and emotionally arresting animated work, Nathan & Bryan—a six-year labor of love in which 36 individually quilted frames form a seamless animated loop is the centerpiece of Crushes. Nathan & Bryan began as live footage of Climer’s friends Nathan and Bryan, later translated—frame by painstaking frame—into a sequence of 36 meticulously quilted panels. Each panel measures approximately 36″ × 48″, together forming a stop-motion loop that evokes both movement and stillness

The piece captures a brief, tender moment: one boy kissing another on the cheek. It’s an image of innocent affection, suspended in time and endlessly repeating. What might have been a fleeting gesture—easily missed, easily forgotten—becomes monumental through craft and repetition. In Nathan & Bryan, Climer reclaims a moment of queer tenderness and gives it permanence, inviting viewers to witness the quiet power of love made visible.

Several works draw from classical iconography, subtly recoding Western art history through a queer lens. A shirtless muscular man becomes a modern St. Sebastian—protector against plagues. Another stands against a blazing sunset, haloed in lens flare that hints at angel wings. A football player, all bravado and soft focus, echoes Hercules and the evolving myths of masculinity. In Crushes, these archetypes don’t collapse under the weight of their symbolism—they shimmer, uncertain and luminous, like the memory of a glance that lasted too long.

Crushes runs from Sept 5th to Sept 28th, 2025 at MAG Gallery, 3931 18th St, San Francisco CA. 

Gallery hours: thurs/friday 12-7pm. Sat/Sun 12-5pm. 

www.mag-galleries.com 

IG: Maggalleries and GregoryClimer

Opening Reception: September 5th, 5-9pm

Artist Talk: September 13th, 2-3pm

Chat with artist: September 20th 3-4pm

Closing Reception: September 28th, 3-5pm