In 1986, Stephen Pusey (b. 1952) emigrated from London to New York City after being invited to exhibit his work at the prestigious P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City. At the time, he was best known for the monumental figurative murals he created in London between 1977 and 1982, many of which were commissioned by local government. Alongside his studio practice, Pusey was deeply engaged in community work––a commitment that later led him to co-found the pioneering online art and discussion hub Plexus in 1996. By 2003, nearly two decades after his arrival in New York, Pusey had undergone a remarkable transformation––no small feat––moving from figurative painting into digital media, and ultimately into abstraction. Using large, fluid marks and gestural structures made with different sized brushes in acrylic paint, Pusey invented his own recognizable language. In the artist’s words:

My works are constructed of a matrix of calligraphic gestures, which appear to flow in and out of space. I work without hesitation and autonomically. It is a process in which imagination, the subconscious, and critical judgment work in tandem.

Stephen Pusey’s installation of seven large paintings at 499 Park Avenue takes the lobby's stripped-down, modernist architecture into consideration. On the white wall he has mounted four full-colored paintings swirling with calligraphic marks. For the black wall, he has chosen two grisaille paintings, and in the atrium, he has placed a large horizontal work, whose palette and calligraphic marks are distinct from the others.

While Pusey uses a similar approach in all of his works, he never repeats himself. Looking first at the paintings installed on the white marble wall, Spilling Genesis, Until the End of the World, Pi, and Transformer (all dated 2021), the viewer sees four distinct paintings. Executed with a vocabulary that is the result of drawing with a loaded brush, each incremental brushstroke is singular in color, structure, and density. Some marks are solid, others are semi-transparent. All exist in an indeterminate abstract space and both their imagery, and their titles evoke states of change and beginning: a number that cannot be expressed exactly for example (Pi), or a device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another while changing the voltage (Transformer), with Until the End of the World and Spilling Genesis, referencing origins and creation.