Homage to The Auction Block
New Paintings by Steve Locke
On View: July 15th to August 14th
LaMontagne Gallery is pleased to present Homage to the Auction Block, new paintings by Steve Locke. In the new series the artist brings color theory to his ongoing dialogue on images of racial exploitation in American history including the conflicted past Locke explored in the Auction Block Hall Proposal and the Three Deliberate Grays for Freddie at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Locke said,
"The application of flat color, the use of the grid, and the reliance on “primary structures” have art historical meanings central to Western Modernism-and its notion that form could be separated from its content. The works retain some residue of their and conception with guided and grid lines at times visible in the hand painted surface. Proportion and chromatic relationships are explored to varying visual effect. The use of the “auction block” motif literally organizes these modernist relations around the central symbol of chattel slavery in the Americas. The work re-frames the work of modernism around the shape that made it possible."
Ten percent of the gallery's proceeds from the auction block series will be donated to The Black School. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the gallery we open by appointment only.
STEVE LOCKE (b. 1963, Cleveland, OH) was raised in Detroit, Michigan and joined the faculty of the Pratt Institute in New York in the Fall of 2019. Prior, he was a Boston-based artist for over twenty years. He received an M.F.A. in 2001 from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and holds Bachelors Degrees from Boston University and MassArt. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2002. He has been artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (2016) and for the City of Boston (2018). He has received grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and The Art Matters Foundation. Solo exhibitions include, there is no one left to blame, curated by Helen Molesworth for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, The School of Love with Samsøñ (Boston, MA), Family Pictures with Gallery Kayafas (Boston, MA and most recently #Killers at YOURS MINE & OURS in New York. He has had solo projects with the Boston Public Library, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Mendes Wood in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at VOLTA 5 in Basel, Switzerland and P.S. Satellites-A Project of Prospect IV in New Orleans. His work has been reviewed in ARTFORUM, Art in America, Art New England, JUXTAPOZ, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker.