81 Leonard Gallery is pleased to announce Inertia, featuring four artists whose distinctly different approaches to painting result in a shared energy and dynamism. Across a spectrum from abstraction to realism, Jenny Reinhardt, Charlotte Hailstone, Reuben Gordon, and Akiva Listman, illustrate the spirit and speed of urban life. The works on view in Inertia appear collectively as a study of the laws of motion; snapshots of suspended movement occupy a space somewhere between beginning and end.

Motion as a subject becomes apparent through geometry, perspective, and material manipulation, implying movement by an unknown actor or force. Angles, bends, and twists spark a visual dialogue. Jenny Reinhardt’s sculptural works, made with canvas under plastic sheeting, fold in on themselves and explode outward at the same time. Charlotte Hailstone’s work echoes this tension from multiple directions. Her compositions maintain a floating quality, as she depicts imagined trajectories of plexiglass forms against the negative space of the canvas. Akiva Listman’s paintings of street signs engage in a similar investigation with imagined objects in motion rendered at different perspectives and existing only within the space of the picture plane. While Reuben Gordon’s paintings portray real scenes of the Williamsburg Bridge, his expressive brushstrokes, oversaturation, and illusive light effects shake up the predictable movement implied by linear perspective.

Reuben Gordon lives and works in New York, NY, where he was born in 1996. He received a BA in Studio Art from Bard College in 2018 and is currently enrolled in the Hunter College MFA program, with a degree in Painting expected in the spring of 2026. He has also studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute, Bard College Berlin, and the University of Pennsylvania. Exhibitions include Dirty work, 205 Hudson Gallery, New York, NY (2024); You already know, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Seoul, Charles Addams Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (2023); Untitled art: Miami Beach, Baert Gallery, Miami, FL (2020); You live long enough, Bard College UBS Exhibition Space, Red Hook, NY (2018); Summer, OMI International Art Center, Ghent, NY (2017); and 21 and counting, The Painting Center, New York, NY (2014). Collections include the Frederick R Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles; Friends Seminary, New York; and private collections internationally.

Charlotte Hailstone (b. 1994) is a New York-based painter and curator whose work explores color, perception, and spatial tension. With a background in graphic design, her practice is built on formal clarity through composition, color theory, and the translation of spatial experience onto a flat surface. Her palettes draw equally from pop culture and art history, filtered through a diaristic lens that gives each painting a coded, personal resonance. Hailstone received her BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design and has exhibited at Ruby Dakota Gallery, The Hole, Marinaro Gallery, Harper’s, Ryan Hastings Gallery, and Salon 21, as well as at Future Fair in New York.

New York City based artist Akiva Listman works to distill city views to their essential elements through his paintings. Photos of the streetscape provide a foundation for each composition before being reduced to highlight each object’s complexity and individuality. As a third-generation New Yorker, Listman meticulously observes the city and draws inspiration from areas of family history. He brings humor, personification, and relatability to each work through references to pop culture, shared experience, and personal stories. Listman holds a BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and has exhibited in New York at venues including All St., Zepster Gallery, and 188 Allen St Gallery, as well as in California and Austria.

Jenny Reinhardt’s work investigates the sentient and material experiences of life on Earth in relation to the vast, elusive dimensions of metaphysical experience. Her practice is grounded in a dialogue between the tangible and the transcendent—a tension that runs through both form and content. Every iteration of her artistic choices is anchored by these concepts, serving as the touchstone of her creative process. Jenny Reinhardt spent her formative years in Washington DC. She earned BA in English Literature from the University of Michigan followed by an MFA, Cum Laude at The New York Academy of Art. After teaching studio art and Art History early in her career, Jenny now works full-time in her studio, located in the Valley Arts District in Orange, New Jersey.