M. LeBlanc

About the Gallery
In 2017, M. LeBlanc opened in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood, presenting an exhibition program of international contemporary art, drawing predominantly from artists working in Germany and the US. Berlin artist Hans-Jörg Mayer (b. 1955 in Singen, DE) mounted the gallery’s first solo exhibition, it was titled Kristen Stewart. The annual exhibition program is hosted in the gallery's turn-of-the-century storefront and weighted toward solo exhibitions and projects by gallery artists. This program is punctuated occasionally with young group exhibitions, readings, and screenings, that are dedicated to bringing celebrated international artists to a Chicago community. In 2020, M. LeBlanc began publishing artists' books and writing as well as its own exhibition catalogs. Since its founding, the gallery has produced over forty solo and group exhibitions and participated in art fairs nationally and abroad.

About the presentation
M. LeBlanc presents a selection of new works by the Chicago-based artist Arnold J. Kemp. Working as a printmaker, painter, sculptor, and playwright, he has developed a wide-ranging practice over the last three decades that probes at the nature of human identity and connection. Kemp has pursued a long-standing interest in interrogating the politics of “othering,” central to the imperial project of Western Enlightenment, through a variety of forms and motifs. Masks are a persistent iconographic concern, a performative marker of belonging, othering, and world-making.