M. LeBlanc is proud to present Monologue of a Deaf Man, the gallery’s first exhibition with Chicago artist Joseph Grigely, and his first solo gallery show in Chicago since 2004. Grigely’s exhibition consists of two bodies of work separated by the space of over 30 years: early dispersion paintings from the late 1980s and more recent conceptual work related to the politics of disability and difference.

Joseph Grigely (American, b. 1956 in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts) lives and works in Chicago. He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the MCA, Chicago; the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Serralves Foundation, Porto; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. He has also participated in the Whitney, Venice, Berlin, Istanbul, Liverpool, and Sydney Biennials.

Grigely’s books include Textualterity: Art, Theory, and Textual Criticism (1995), Conversation Pieces (1998), Exhibition Prosthetics (2010), Oceans of Love: The Uncontainable Gregory Battcock (2016), Acknowledgments (2024), and Otherhow: Essays and Documents on Art and Disability, 1985–2024 (2025). He has a D.Phil. from Oxford University and is Professor of Visual & Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.