New York-based artist Steve Locke’s exhibition the fire next time is a meditation on uniquely American forms of violence directed at Black and queer people. In his interdisciplinary practice, Locke engages issues of identity, desire, race, violence, and memory, revealing as much tenderness and humor as he does brutality. Over the course of his decades-long career, Locke has largely worked in painting. Primarily concerned with how we ascribe meaning to portraiture while exploring the relationships between and among men, in recent years Locke has introduced a more personal, political, and critical engagement with histories of racism and anti-Blackness, the Western canon of art history, and American society.

the fire next time takes its title from a book by James Baldwin, first published in 1963 amid the growing civil rights movement. Locke’s exhibition includes a MASS MoCA-commissioned sculptural installation; a new series of freestanding paintings; #Killers (2017-ongoing), a series of hand-drawn portraits of American mass murderers and accused or acquitted killers; and a data-driven site-specific installation, A Partial List of Unarmed African-Americans Who Were Killed By Police or Who Died in Police Custody During My Sabbatical from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 2014-2015 (2016), among other new and recent works.

Download a PDF of the exhibition gallery guide here.

About the Artist:
Steve Locke (b.1963, Cleveland, OH) lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY. He received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2001. Locke’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg (2022); The Gallatin Galleries, New York University, NY (2019); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (2018); Boston Public Library, MA (2018); Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI (2014); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2013), and Savannah College of Art and Design, GA (2008). He has participated in group exhibitions at the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (2023); MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), Boston, MA (2023); Jack Shainman Gallery, Kinderhook, NY (2021); Fitchburg Art Museum, MA (2020); Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA (2020); Boston Center for the Arts, MA (2018); Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (2018); Longwood Art Gallery, Bronx Council of the Arts, NY (2014); deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA (2013); and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (2002). Locke is the recipient of several awards, including the Rappaport Prize, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2022); the Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2020); The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2013); and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2014); among many others.

Curated by Evan Garza, Curatorial Exchange Initiative Fellow, MASS MoCA.

the fire next time is part of MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI) which is generously supported through a leadership gift from Sarah Arison and the Arison Arts Foundation, Michi Jigarjian, Denise Sobel, the Teiger Foundation, and Anders Schroeder. Additional support is provided by the Director’s Catalyst Fund, with generous contributions from Greg and Anne Avis, Kelly and Bill Kaiser, Steve and Lisa Jenks, Bob Gold, and an anonymous donor.

Additional support for Steve Locke: the fire next time is provided by David and Marlene Persky.

Steve Locke: the fire next time, as installed at MASS MoCA on August 3, 2024. Photo credit Jon Verney.