Steve Locke
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Biography
Steve Locke (b.1963) was born in Cleveland, OH and lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY. Spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, Locke’s practice critically engages with the Western canon to muse on the connections between desire, identity, and violence.
Locke received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2001. Extending his commitment to a painting practice, he began to seek alternative ways to amplify public engagement around his art, partnering with institutions, municipalities, and even the US Postal Service to reach new audiences.
Throughout his artistic career, Locke’s work has questioned how we ascribe meaning to portraiture. Speaking about the series when you’re a boy…, which he began in 2005, Locke says that he makes “drawings and paintings that explore relationships between and among men. The exchange of looks, the privilege of looking and the wish to be seen are positions I explore to reveal the ways men respond, desire, and relate to each other.”
Other works by Locke imbue portraiture with menace and pain. #Killers (2017–present) presents viewers with skillfully rendered portraits of men and women who have killed Black people. These chilling images, in Locke’s words, “direct the viewer to the source of this kind of violence against black people. The source is these men and the inchoate, and unnameable whiteness that creates and supports them. … They are killers adrift in the lie of whiteness.”
Locke’s Homage to the Auction Block (2019–present) interrogates similar themes. Re-envisioning Josef A. Albers’s 1950–1976 Homage to the Square series, these compositions mark a significant formal departure from the artist’s earlier works. Imbuing Albers’s reductive imagery with an ominous charge, Homage to the Auction Block abstracts a slave auction block to its most basic geometric silhouette—reflecting Locke’s belief that “the basic Modernist form is indeed the slave auction block.” Queering the pure formalism and color theory of Albers, Homage to the Auction Block unpicks the intertwined histories of race and modernism.
Locke’s practice ultimately pushes viewers to confront and critically engage with a complicated present and painful past. As he concludes, “If art is anything, it’s a public discourse. I’m not making art because I’m trying to express myself or share my feelings with the world because my feelings are no different than anyone else’s. I’m not special because I’m an artist. What I can do is I can make people pay attention to things through composition, through color, through scale, through organization through conceptual frameworks. I can make people look at something and think about it.”
Locke’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the daily practice of painting, Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA (2022); in the name of love,The Gallatin Galleries, New York University, NY (2019); Three Deliberate Grays for Freddie (A Memorial for Freddie Gray), curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (2018); Love Letter to a Library, Boston Public Library, MA (2018); The School of Love, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA (2018); there is no one left to blame, curated by Helen Molesworth, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2013), traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI (2014); and Rapture, curated by Erin Dziedzic, Hall Street Gallery, Savannah College of Art and Design, GA (2008). Locke has participated in many group exhibitions, including The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression, MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA (2023); Feedback, curated by Helen Molesworth, The School, Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY (2021); The BIG Picture: Giant Photographs and Powerful Portfolios, Fitchburg Art Museum, MA (2020); Recruiting for Utopia: Print and the Imagination, Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA (2020); Coded, curated by Alexandria Smith, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, MA (2018); Nine Moments for Now, curated by Dell Marie Hamilton, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (2018); Gay, curated by Ivan Monforte, Longwood Art Gallery, Bronx Council on the Arts, NY (2014); Paint Things: Beyond the Stretcher, curated by Evan Garza and Dina Deitsch, deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA (2013); and Making a Mark, curated by Helen Shlien, Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (2002). Locke’s works are in the collections of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, NC; Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, MA; Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; and Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA, among others. He is the recipient of many grants and awards, including the Rappaport Prize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2022); the Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2020); the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2014); the LEF Contemporary Work Fund Grant (2009); and the Art Matters Foundation Award (2007).
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Exhibitions
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Between Us
1 Sep - 15 Oct 2023 GermantownAlexander Gray Associates, Germantown presents Between Us, an exhibition gathering works by an intergenerational group of queer artists advancing the practice of portraiture. Confronting the cyclical progress and backlash of...Read more -
Steve Locke
your blues ain’t like mine 27 Oct - 17 Dec 2022 New YorkAlexander Gray Associates, New York presented Steve Locke: your blues ain’t like mine, the artist’s first one-person exhibition in Chelsea. Featuring recent figurative paintings and sculptures, your blues ain’t like...Read more -
Steve Locke
Homage to the Auction Block 10 Jun - 17 Jul 2022 GermantownAlexander Gray Associates, Germantown announces Steve Locke’s first exhibition with the Gallery, Homage to the Auction Block. This focused presentation of the artist’s ongoing Homage to the Auction Block series...Read more
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Public Collections
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art, Winter Park, FL
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, NC
Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR
Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT
Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, MA
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, MA
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA -
News / Events
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What you looking at? / Who you talking to?
A conversation with Helga Davis and Steve Locke February 24, 2024Join us at Alexander Gray Associates, New York for What you looking at ? / Who you talking to? A conversation between Helga Davis and Steve Locke on Saturday, February 24 at 3:00 PM.
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Steve Locke
Green Family Art Foundation October 7, 2023Steve Locke is included in a group exhibition, Togetherness: For Better or Worse at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas.
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Steve Locke
MassArt Art Museum (MAAM) October 5, 2023Steve Locke is included in a group exhibition, The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression at the MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), Boston, Massachusetts.
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Melvin Edwards and Steve Locke
Bruce Museum April 2, 2023Melvin Edwards and Steve Locke are included in the group exhibition Then Is Now: Contemporary Black Art in America at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT.
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Steve Locke
University Hall Gallery, University of Massachusetts November 14, 2022Steve Locke included in the group exhibition Equals 6: A Sum Effect of Frank Bowling’s 5+1 at University Hall Gallery at University of Massachusetts in Boston, MA.
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Steve Locke
Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech University October 13, 2022Steve Locke's one person exhibition the daily practice of painting at Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA.
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Articles / Reviews