Steven Shearer, “The Late Follower”

This Canadian artist’s work is, in a word, weird. His arsenal of paintings, text panels, silkscreens and photo collages swing wildly between conceptualist-inflected Pop Art, and odder still, a style that could be described as a throw back to 19th-century Symbolism and Pre-Raphaelite painting—with a touch of Munch thrown in for good measure. His best-known subjects consists of of long-haired, androgynous dudes, who appear to have escaped from an ’70s heavy metal band. Some of them are pictured with bloodied mouths, some are seen strung up by nooses. Wistful, melancholic, romantic and perverse, Shearer’s work seems to be longing for the sort of lost youth that burns brightest when it burns out.