In Conversation: Steve Locke & Evan Garza

Join us for an intimate conversation with American artist Steve Locke as we celebrate the publication of his first career monograph Steve Locke: I Said What I Said (MASS MoCA/DelMonico Books), edited by MASS MoCA curator Evan Garza. The book, which explores three decades of Locke’s career, grew out of their recent exhibition, Steve Locke: the fire next time at MASS MoCA (Aug 2024–Nov 2025), selected among the Top Ten in Artforum’s Best of 2024. The two will discuss the absurdity, curiosity, desire, and rage that define contemporary American consciousness and its legacies of discrimination. Garza will guide us through Locke’s career-long conceptual exploration of portraiture, perceptions of the male figure, and themes of modernism and racial violence. Working in painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, and public art, Locke brings to light our dark past and present, looking closely at America’s history of racial violence and spectacle. In his interdisciplinary practice, Locke engages issues of identity, desire, race, violence, and memory, revealing as much tenderness and humor as he does brutality. 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. A reception and book signing will follow the conversation in MASS MoCA’s Research & Development Store. Reserve your copy in advance for pick-up at the event here. Steve Locke (b.1963, Cleveland, OH) lives and works in the Hudson Valley and New York City. He earned his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he taught for more than 20 years. Locke has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MASS MoCA (2024); Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech (2022); The Gallatin Galleries, New York University (2019); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston…