James English Leary, “Hoi Polloi”

A founder of The Bruce High Quality Foundation (a satirical collective that, beginning in 2001, took aim at art institutions and history), James English Leary has since stepped out from the shadows of what had been an anonymous group to reveal himself as a painter worth watching, thanks to his shaped canvases with a figurative bent. For his gallery debut, he includes panels cut into silhouetted facial profiles, rimmed with abstract blobs intruding upon each other.