Stephen Buscemi, The Dancer, 2024, acrylic on linen, 48 x 60 inches

Stephen Buscemi
In the Night When I Am Full

September 12 through October 26, 2024
Opens Thursday, September 12, 2024, 6–8pm

Harper’s Apartment
51 East 74th Street, 2X, New York, NY 10021
Thursday–Saturday, 12–6pm

Harper’s is pleased to announce In the Night When I Am Full, New York-based artist Stephen Buscemi’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. In this presentation, Buscemi takes a formal look at the arcane aesthetics that shadow nighttime. The exhibition opens on Thursday, September 12, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.

For Buscemi, darkness is a point of departure: the artist begins each of the works that comprise In the Night When I Am Full on shadowy gray canvases. In doing so, he embraces a subtractive approach to painting, allowing the contours of his figures to emerge from the substrate through the use of airbrushed acrylic paint. With this improvisatory method, Buscemi is afforded less control of compositional space than with traditional light-to-dark tone layering. The artist’s experimental mode of painting instead involves extracting imagery with illuminated hues: he etches out mysterious scenes with gentle sprays of pigment and faint brushstrokes. Here, mercurial figures shimmer in shifting luminosity—light that might radiate from the moon, glisten under bright stage lights or descend from a supernatural realm. The sources of Buscemi’s enthralling beams of light are intentionally ambiguous to enliven climactic episodes, enshrouded by the idiosyncrasies of nightfall.

Buscemi often conjures an anticipatory spirit in his spellbinding scenes. This tension emanates from works like The Light That Covers Me, wherein a man dressed in a black suit is rendered from behind, overlooking a barricaded abyss of white light. This glowing halo frames the figure’s silhouette: it emerges from the center of the canvas as if a divine presence, enchanting a still moment in an otherwise suspenseful landscape. Meanwhile, amidst the darkness, an iridescent spectrum of blue and green winks at the viewer, diffusing a crystalline brilliance even within the quiet obscurity. To achieve a foggy yet sleek finish within this work and others, Buscemi steadily incorporates thin washes of paint, gently delineating between negative and positive space with subtle gradation. With The Dancer, the metered interplay between darkness and light persists. In this incandescent work, a solitary figure appears to sway under the moon, or perhaps revel in the limelight of a barren stage. Dimmed by the umbra of dusk, the dancer’s skin projects an aura of pastel luminance, while the lilac gems that stud their sequined jacket twinkle like the stars and planets that freckle the cosmos. 

Ultimately, Buscemi is adept at choreographing a hauntingly seductive palette in this work and across In the Night When I Am Full. Throughout this striking presentation, the artist wields variegated shades of blue, gray, and white with expressive contrast, translating the temperamental moods and circumstances that awaken as the sun sets into an esoteric monochrome. For Buscemi, representations of twilight suspend the laws of empirical reality: in the worlds he creates, the most bewitching and inexplicable events occur at nightfall.

Stephen Buscemi (b. 1998, Long Island, NY) received a BFA from SUNY Cortland in 2021. Most recently, his work has been presented at Carl Kostyál, Marettimo, IT (2024); Harper’s, East Hampton (2024); Monti8, Latina, IT (2024); Giovanni’s Room, Los Angeles (2024); Blade Study, New York (2023); and Lorin Gallery, Los Angeles (2023). Buscemi lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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Detail: Stephen Buscemi, The Dancer, 2024

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