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Working feverishly to get all the pieces done in time for his upcoming show in Chelsea, Shaun El C. Leonardo is excited and a little worried about how it will be received.

"I'm nervous," he says. "My last solo show in New York City was in 2007."
And now this emerging artist is back with "Death of a King," an examination of superheroes/anti-heroes in a post-apocalyptic Queens. The work will feature six paintings, six drawings, and one video installation.

"You'll see a lot of figures that are a hybridization of different cultural elements that I'm drawing from my upbringing and background," Leonardo explains.

Leonardo was born in Queens to immigrant parents and was raised in the borough. He says he draws a lot of inspiration from his Dominican mother and his Guatemalan father.

"Because my work has to do with masculine iconography, the Latino machismo that I grew up with in my family plays a huge role," he says.

That role can be seen in many of Leonardo's performance works, like the Mexican wrestler fighting the invisible man.

And while drawing on his heritage, the Queens artist is also fueled by Hispanic artists past and present.

"Salvador Dali is probably my ultimate inspiration – a person that I'll always go back to," he says. "But there are certain contemporaries, people constantly making work around me, that provide fuel for the fire, so to speak. People like Ivan Monforte, Juan Ortiz, Elio Alba. And who are these folks? These are all artists that are practicing now of Latino heritage, artists that have exhibited with me."

Leonardo's exhibitions are all self-portraits in the form of super heroes, mostly in a vulnerable state.

"That ultimately poses the question, 'What is a hero when there's nobody to save?'" he says. "What's the definition of that super hero figure when he has no use, and what do we all feel when we are vulnerable in that way?"