Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag. Designed by Dieter Appelt, Klaus W. Eisenlohr, Justus Müller and Christian Zwirner.

At this fraught time, it is imperative that we demand accountability and action from our elected leaders.  We have to tell them what we expect of them and then hold them to those expectations.  Petitions are great, but they overshadow the important work of individual citizens going directly to their elected representatives for a redress of grievances. I don’t think acts of individual kindness to strangers are bad, either.  But what we face is not interpersonal, it’s systemic and it must be fought systemically.

I understand not wanting to put a target on oneself when an autocrat is coming to power but I think of it this way: I am a queer, black academic.  I’m already targeted by the incoming regime, so what the hell?  I am certainly not going to go out like a punk-ass.

So I sent this letter today.  If you are in a red state or a blue state, I think you need to do the same.  It is completely acceptable to demand-from GOP and Dems alike-to know how they are going to defend the Constitution that they have sworn to uphold. 

It really does matter what side you are on.  It really does matter what elected officials do and it matters if you remain silent while they are doing it.  It really does matter if you see what is going on and you are too paralyzed to act. It really does matter if you choose to only do things that make you feel better personally. It really does matter if you put yourself at risk to help others. 

It really does matter.

Dear Senators,
Thank you for your consistent and principled advocacy for the people of Massachusetts.

We face a real danger in the policies and people being brought out of the shadows and into a Trump administration. In addition to the know-nothing character of the President-Elect, our nation is being turned over to avowed white supremacists, Islamophobes, education privatizers, climate change deniers, and anti-choice zealots. I do not exaggerate when I tell you of the fear I feel for my safety as a gay black American. Hate crimes against African-Americans tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center have spiked since the election. The vile, racist underbelly of the nation has been legitimized. It is becoming abundantly clear that the President-Elect is ginning up hatred on social media and undermining our elections and our civil discourse.

This is not ordinary. And as President Obama said, “Where does this stop?” I think mass violence against immigrants, people of color, or Muslims is no longer a specter on the horizon. We are one tweet away from pogroms.

Senators, what are you and other elected officials across the political spectrum going to do to prevent the rise of fascism in our beloved country? I need to know that you will not participate in support or normalizing a Trumpist agenda that will enshrine the values of the KKK in the White House and our courts.

Over 2 million more Americans voted for Secretary Clinton and the President-Elect called all these people “illegal voters.” This is disgusting, dangerous, dishonest and a direct attack on our voting rights. Trump is not to be supported or coddled. He must not be allowed to use the Federal government for the enrichment of his family’s fortune. He must reveal his financial and political ties to foreign actors. His appointments must be held to scrutiny and denied and their racist, misogynistic views must be repudiated at every level. And principled statesfolk like yourselves must fight against this hateful agenda and ensure that Americans who will be the victims of racist Trump supporters are protected.

Senators, my great-grandfather was murdered by the Klan in Georgia. I know of what I speak and I know the things of which these people are capable. I do not think them minor and I do not dismiss them. No one in government should collaborate with them. They do not respond to reason since they do not believe in our shared humanity. The only thing they can be is defeated.

Please, let me know your strategy for resisting and opposing the Trumpist agenda that is so clearly anathema to our beloved nation.

Steve Locke
Dedham, MA

Entrance to Robert Gober’s mid-career retrospective at MoMA

I loved the MoMA show and I had a deep and visceral reaction to it. I actually began to cry in the galleries. This surprised me a great deal, mostly because I know the work and I sort of knew what to expect. It is overwhelming for me to think about the ideas and reactions I have to the work and to the entire show, which I think is beautifully installed.

The first time I saw a Gober installation was the work he had at Dia in 1993 and I confess, I actually had no idea that it was fabricated artwork. As I walked through the same piece at MoMA, I became acutely aware of all of the things that I missed when I saw the piece all those years ago.

It’s impossible for me to separate the imagery in Gober’s work from the massive loss of life to AIDS and how that is manifested on the body. When I walked into the re-creations of the installations from Dia and also the installation from the Jeu de Paume, this was manifestly present. The landscape as a prison, the promise of healing waters, the denial of the intact body, and poisons for the elimination of pests all brought this into overwhelming focus for me.

– See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2014/11/12/steve-locke-on-robert-gober/

A passer-by considers my untitled project at Dlectricity 2014

I want to say thank you to Alivia Zivich and DLECTRICITY 2014 for allowing me to present at this year’s festival.  I did an untitled project with three neons installed on historic Woodward Avenue in Detroit.  Here’s my statement about the work:

A large part of my practice as a painter involves language. My use of neon as an artist is greatly influenced by growing up in Highland Park in view of the YELLOW PAGES and HOSTESS signs of old Detroit. These three works specifically address politics, history, and relationships. Putting these personal thoughts in an historical form used specifically for mass communication makes them public, and public admissions are rare in our current political moment. By manifesting the loss of an icon of a critical and engaged press; the affirmation of Detroit as a site of learning, and dismissing blame as an sustainable position, my work in light creates sites of public consideration of our shared personal and political consciousness.

It was a great opportunity to revisit my hometown with my work and to make some wonderful new friends.  For instance:

Alivia Zivich is a terrific artist and curator.  She runs the space What Pipeline in Southwest Detroit.

Ingrid LaFleur is the mastermind that created Maison LaFleur.  She just got back from Johannesburg doing a project and is now putting together DETROIT IS AFROTOPIA.

Trinosophes has great bands and great coffee and great folks.  They hosted my Untitled (I MISS PETER JENNINGS) before Dlectricity.  Stop in and hang with THE ELECTRIFYING MOJO.

Jonathan Rajewski is making some tough, gorgeous paintings in Hamtramck.

I got a beautiful drawing from the force of nature that is Bailey Scieszka.

Zeb Smith, who looked after me and my show at MOCAD took me for probably the best cup of pour over coffee I’ve ever had at Astro Coffee.  A great place in the shadow of the Detroit Train Station and next to the amazing Slows Bar BQ.  (NB.  Zeb built the doors for Slows.  The guy’s freaking amazing.)

Adrian Pittman has a master plan to put Detroit back on the physical, mental, and digital maps of the world.  And the brother has better shoes than me.  For real.

I am hoping to go back to Detroit for a few weeks this spring if not sooner.  I’ve got something up my sleeve and I hope it works out.

Gran Fury: READ MY LIPS at 80WSE Gallery, Steinhardt School Department of Art and Art Professions at NYU. An amazing show of powerful and desperate work that spoke to a desperate time. It makes me realize how close we were when we all were dying.

Brian Bress at Cherry and Martin at the Armory Show. I love the way he manipulates the space of video. His work expands and contracts as things enter and leave the screen. The hilarity of his work is exacerbated by his craft with all the elements of video, performance, and production. The yellow border on his video at Armory was a container of delight.

There was some painting at the Armory that really was terrific. There wasn’t a lot of it, but Tomory Dodge really made up for the lack of sophisticated painting. The show at CRG was installed beautifully and the paintings really overwhelmed you with their rich application and independence. Each painting provided a different visual structure; some related to landscape, some to atmosphere, and so on. There were no nostalgic references or attempts to recreate a certain moment in painting’s history. Modestly sized and confidently executed, Dodge showed that abstraction could be lyrical, alive, and beautiful and still carry within it ideas about collapse and entropy.

VOLTA is my favorite fair. It’s smaller than Armory and it has only one artist per booth. You get a broader view of the work of anartist at this fair and there were a lot of great things to see here.

Matt Rich at Samsøn. The work is much more uncanny. You really can no longer tell how it is made and the choice of color makes the experience of looking richer and more rewarding. Rich is making work that is stripped of all its support and still refuses to collapse.

I also really need to say that the Boston Galleries really were awesome at VOLTA. I’m not just saying that to suck up to anyone. I feel that Rich, Andrew Masullo at Steven Zevitas and Jeff Perrott at LaMontagne had terrific shows. (Andrew was all over New York, with a great show at the Whitney Biennial and works at the Independent Art Fair.) Seen together, this could lead to a discussion about contemporary abstraction and its relationship to Boston. Looking at Perrott’s work in light of Sue Williams’s paintings up now at ICA Boston in FIGURING COLOR I think that he has a better handle on what the exuberance of painting can tell us about contemporary life. It’s not just a major gesture of joy; it’s an indicator of search, a documentation of conflict, and sometimes, a way to come together.

Razvan Boar at Ana Cristea. So nice to see figure painting that had drama, action, and bathos. These paintings relied not on the photographic, but a real sense of the cinematic. The compositions were as exciting as Balthus and the color, though muted, showed a real concern with mixing. He was one of the few figure painters I saw that knew how to mix a chromatic shadow. (The other was the divine Philip Pearstein at the ADAA Fair.)

Domenico Piccolo at Federico Bianchi. Heartbreakingly beautiful and tough pictures painted in washes of ink and oil on acetate and vinyl. The antipathy between the materials creates puddles, stains, and smudges that resolve themselves into figures and spaces that are feel weightless; as if breathing on the images will make them disappear. Their delicate execution is a wonderful counterpoint to the images of loss and isolation he captures.

There was other great stuff at VOLTA as well. Neal Tait at Vigo Gallery, Patrick Jacobs at The Pool NYC, Andreas Johansson at Galleri Flach in Stockholm (Pop-up books, who knew?), and Sheila Gallagher at DodgeGallery.

I went to the ADAA Fair, The Independent Art Fair, VOLTA, The Armory Show, the Gran Fury show, and a few Chelsea galleries. I’ll get to the rest later.