Anderson Ranch Editions: Steve Locke
About the Work
We are excited to announce our latest Anderson Ranch Editions project – a suite of 9 prints by renowned artist Steve Locke. The prints are a continuation of two important bodies of work within Locke’s practice, his critically acclaimed Homage to the Auction Block and cruisers series.
Through a stunning series of 4 screenprints, 2 aquatints and 2 embossings, Locke continues his exploration of modernism and re-envisioning Josef A. Albers’s 1950–1976 Homage to the Square series 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.
In Locke’s cruisers series, which was just on view in his New Yorker reviewed exhibition at Alexander Gray Associates in New York this winter, the artist depicts intimate moments between men to better map the connection between identity and desire. Imbuing a sideways glance with eagerness, uncertainty, and risk, Locke explains these works represent “… possibility … [and] an acknowledgment of beauty.”
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.”
To learn more or schedule a private viewing please email [email protected], or call 970.923.3181
About the Artist
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.
Steve Locke’s work has been the subject of numerous one-person exhibitions, including 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, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (2018); Love Letter to a Library, the Boston Public Library, MA (2018); The School of Love, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA (2018); and there is no one left to blame, curated by Helen Molesworth, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2013), traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI (2014). He has also participated in a multitude of group exhibitions, including Feedback, curated by Helen Molesworth, The School, Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY (2021); The BIG Picture: Giant Photographs and Powerful Portfolios, the Fitchburg Art Museum, MA (2020); Recruiting for Utopia: Print and the Imagination, the Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA (2020); and Coded, curated by Alexandria Smith, the Mills Gallery, the Boston Center for the Arts, MA (2018). Locke’s work is in the collections of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Asheville, NC; the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY; the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, MA; the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, MA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; and the Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA. 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).
Contact Us
Prints are available for purchase and the proceeds provide ongoing support for all Ranch programming. If you have questions about the Anderson Ranch Editions program, or would like help with a purchase, please email [email protected], or call 970.923.3181.