The first career monograph of American artist Steve Locke (born 1963) captures the absurdity, curiosity, desire and rage that define contemporary American consciousness and its legacies of discrimination. Working in painting, drawing, installation and public art, Locke’s work 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.