A defining feature of much of Steve Locke’s practice is an exploration of how meaning and identity are encoded through portraiture, with a particular focus on male desire, vulnerability, and gazes. Out of his exploration came a recurring theme of a man’s head with a tongue hanging out of his mouth—simultaneously comical, vulnerable, sensual, even disturbing—a motif that dominates his 2012 series you don’t deserve me. Discussing this peculiar visual, Locke explains that “It’s hard to think of someone as powerful when their tongue is hanging out of their mouth. That might be an indication of lust or stupidity or absent-mindedness…it's something that goes against this sort of intact, whole, contained representation of men that’s the hallmark of portraiture.”
Employing tactics like mounting portraits on plumbing fixtures and using brightly painted beveled-edge stretchers to make the portraits appear to hover against the white walls, works in you don’t deserve me break away from the traditional surface of the wall and are imbued with a very physical, almost anthropomorphic presence. By asserting their presence into the physical space of the viewer, Locke’s portraits are granted the ability to gaze back, creating a grid of ‘gazes’ between the observer and the observed. According to Locke, it’s like “They’re floating around in the atmosphere, waiting to possess somebody, or get inside your head and transform you.”
