Paintings and Sculptures by Steve Locke Go on View at Opera House

Steve Locke, No. 2 from 100 Watercolors, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Samsøn

Steve Locke, No. 2 from 100 Watercolors, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Samsøn

(HUDSON, N.Y.) – A solo exhibition of paintings and sculptural works by Boston-based artist Steve Locke opens at the Hudson Opera House on Saturday, April 4, 2015, with an artist’s reception at 5pm, and remains on view through May 10, 2015. The exhibit, that last time we touched the water, features a selection of paintings from Locke’s 100 Watercolors series and several small paintings mounted on brightly decorated pedestals using metal pipes.

Locke’s work is colorful, complex, and unapologetically human. Concerned with figuration and perceptions of the male figure, Locke’s art explores themes of masculinity and homosexuality, both integral issues in the artist’s work. For several years Locke has been making images of male heads with their tongues sticking out. Lushly painted, in a wide-ranging palette, they are alternately disturbing, comical, vulnerable, and sensual.

“It’s hard to make a painting of a man and not have him look important. So I came up with this weird gesture,” Locke explained in an interview with the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. “I like that they’re not heroic, and not attached to any body. They’re floating around in the atmosphere, waiting to possess somebody, or get inside your head and transform you.”

Steve Locke’s recent solo exhibition, there is no one left to blame, opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. He has had solo exhibitions in São Paulo, Brasil and at VOLTA 5 in Basel, Switzerland, and has been in group shows in Boston, New York, Pennsylvania, Savannah, Seattle, and Beijing. He has received multiple nominations for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Joan Mitchell Award and the Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. In 2008, he was the visiting professor and artist in residence at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design in 2001 and holds Bachelor’s degrees from Boston University and MassArt. Mr. Locke is an Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Visiting Core Critic at Yale, and is represented by Samsøn Gallery in Boston.

The Hudson Opera House offers a year-round schedule of arts and cultural programming in the former Hudson City Hall, which houses New York State’s oldest surviving theater. Ongoing programs include concerts, readings, lectures, exhibitions, theater and dance presentations, after-school programs, workshops, classes and community arts events like the annual Winter Walk on Warren Street.

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