Stephen Pusey (born 1952) is a New York-based artist of

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and

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descent known for Abstract art and earlier work as a painter of figurative community murals in London, UK.

Early life and education

Stephen Pusey was born on 24 June 1952 and studied painting at

Saint Martins School of Art Saint Martin's School of Art was an art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's became part of t ...

, London, UK from which he graduated in 1975. Stephen Pusey Strange Attractors 2021-m

Career

From 1977 to 1982, Pusey painted large outdoor community murals on the exteriors of buildings, the most notable of which were the

Covent Garden Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist sit ...

, Earlham Street mural, 1977 and the mural '' Children at Play'' on the

Brixton Academy Brixton Academy (originally known as the Astoria Variety Cinema, previously known as Carling Academy Brixton, currently named O2 Academy Brixton as part of a sponsorship deal with the O2 brand) is a mid-sized concert venue located in South Wes ...

in 1982. His debut solo exhibition in the USA was at

P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...

in 1986, after which he moved permanently to New York City. In the years that followed his work included experimentation with digital media and

Net Art upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the ph ...

in addition to painting, drawing and sculpture that combined calligraphic gesture that veered from the figurative to

Abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An a ...

. In 1994 he founded the online art and discussion hub, Plexus, with curator Yu Yeon Kim with whom he curated, "Omnizone, Perspectives in Mapping Digital Culture", in 1997 and was a founding member of the Foundation for Digital Culture in 1996. Concurrent with his digital and network explorations, Pusey continued exhibiting his paintings in New York City and internationally. In describing an exhibition of the artist's paintings in 2008

Robert C. Morgan Robert C. Morgan (born 1943) is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist. Biography Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in art education f ...

wrote, “Influenced by Borges’ sense of space, time and history, Pusey creates a labyrinthine stasis, embedding distant feelings of the universe that appear in the process of suspending opticality. Instead of a vibrating surface, these paintings suggest a woven space through an optical texture that defies finite properties.” In 2019 the artist was commissioned by

Seoul Metropolitan Government The Seoul Metropolitan Government is a local government of Seoul, South Korea. The mayor is elected to a four-year term by the citizens of Seoul and is responsible for the administration of the city government. The Seoul Metropolitan Government d ...

, South Korea to paint a five sectioned mural in the pavilion of the Oil Tank Culture Park,

Mapo District Mapo District () is one of the 25 districts of Seoul, South Korea. Mapo has a population of 381,330 (2015) and has a geographic area of 23.87 km2 (9.22 sq mi), and is divided into 24 '' dong'' (administrative neighborhoods). Mapo is located in w ...

(Mapo-Gu),

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...

. In a review of a solo exhibition of the artist's paintings in 2021,

John Yau John Yau (born June 5, 1950) is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fictio ...

wrote, “Pusey constantly courts a chaotic mélange of marks but never descends into it. Rather, he respects each of the gestures he makes enough not to destroy them ... Pusey’s cursive marks sit in that zone where writing becomes drawing and vice versa.“

References

External links

Official site

“Global Intersections: New Cultural Practices”; paper presented at Kitchen NYC

Plexus

Artists At Work by Robert Knafo

For Walls With Tongues website

Oil Tank Culture Park mural

Oil Tank Culture Park

"Stephen Pusey’s Remarkable Calligraphic Abstractions” by John Yau, Hyperallergic

New Variations on the theme of Ab Ex by Dana Gordon, The New Criterion

David Richard Gallery

"Strange Attractors" VR
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pusey, Stephen 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Artists from New York (state) 20th-century English painters English male painters 21st-century English painters Irish multimedia artists 20th-century Irish painters 21st-century Irish painters Irish male painters Living people 1952 births Alumni of Saint Martin's School of Art 20th-century American male artists 20th-century English male artists 21st-century English male artists 20th-century Irish male artists