Dirty Work

81 Leonard Gallery is pleased to present Dirty Work, a group show featuring RISD MFA Painters. This exhibition unravels the seductive shimmer of virtuosic painting and grounds the act of making in the persistence and physicality of material investigations. These works embrace the mess. Embodied acts accumulate pigment, water, and dust on the surface like geological strata; a terrain of messy, saturated, gesture. The resulting paintings are testaments of labor, visceral and intentional, unfolding slowly – scarred by studio spills, erasures, and the grit of time. Beauty is not an escape but a provocation: these generous accumulations ask the viewer to consider their own role in the act of perception. What does it mean to be complicit in the act of looking? How does one navigate this entanglement of negotiations? At its core, Dirty Work confronts these paradoxical questions and asks the viewer to linger in this murky instability.

Featuring:

Cassidy Argo

Jenny Chen

Mary Connell

Shamira Dharap

Noa Ironic

David Legrand

Xuân-Lam Nguyen

Abigail Parsons

Carrie Wilmarth

Tim Zhang

Image above: Cassidy Argo, Plain Sight, 2024, Oil on panel, 8 x 10 in.