Steve Locke included in the group exhibition Equals 6: A Sum Effect of Frank Bowling’s 5+1 at University Hall Gallery at University of Massachusetts in Boston, MA.
The institution's press release follows:
Organized by Assistant Professor in Art History, John A. Tyson and Gallery Director, Sam Toabe
Produced in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts Boston as a complimentary satellite exhibition to their forthcoming exhibition, Frank Bowling’s Americas, this fall/winter ’22-’23, Equals 6 at the University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston will include artworks by prominent Black artists working in America who engage with abstraction; however, it will extend the definition of abstraction to research, writing, social justice, and curation. In their research, MFA curators by Reto Thüring and Debra Lennard came across a touchstone exhibition at SUNY Stony Brook that Bowling curated in 1969, entitled 5+1. The original show presented Bowling’s work alongside that of five Black, American artists working in abstraction in painting, sculpture, and installation. The artists, all men, included Melvin Edwards, Al Loving, Jack Whitten, Daniel Johnson/LaRue Johnson, William T. Williams, and Bowling himself. Equals 6 with reprise 5+1 with the aim to challenge the gender bias of 5+1 by predominantly presenting works by female and Queer male artists. Stony Brook University’s Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery will also host an archival project, entitled Revisiting 5 + 1, coinciding with our exhibition and the MFA’s, to create a triangulation of the three institutions.
