ABRI MARS is honored to announce Nuns fret not, Stephanie Lucchese’s debut New York solo exhibition. 

Lucchese paints quiet yet disorienting liminal scenes with no hierarchy among the elements depicted, combining background and foreground, subject and object, light and form; where alluded headless beings are satiated by the ephemerality of all things, silently delighting in the comforts of dwelling in the dark twilight of illusive woodlands.  

The end of the afternoon brings with it the coldness in the death of all things that were before, and the mystery of what is yet to come. It’s an in-between space within time where the light of day dissolves into pale blue hues, and everything is swallowed by shadows, clouding the vision and causing a strange sense of longing for everything that is not there.  

Liminality in space is shaped by human absence, yet it can also evoke a cognitive state of transition between an old reality and a new one—an ambiguous experience marked by distress and unease, but also overflowing with fertile openness. Dusk creates a similar shifting cycle, blurring the boundaries between an unlit world and spectral dream-images, as the human eye searches the obscurity for forms trying to summon them into known figuration. 

Except Lucchese is not concerned with things seen, for her works reveal a sense of stillness that refuses to surrender to norms—whether from human or nature’s creation —challenging the implied discomfort brought by thresholds of subconsciousness. She materializes beauty in states of suspension and creates slumbering reflections of pleasure in metaphorical twilights. Nuns Fret Not (At their Convent’s Narrow Room) articulates the possibility of rest amid strangeness and transience, a form of reassurance in finding serenity in perpetual crepuscular liminality. 

William Wordsworth wrote the poem which shares the title with this solo exhibition. It is an invitation to quietude in untroubled, delightful existences, “In truth the prison, into which we doom / Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me / In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound.” 

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found. 

—William Wordsworth, Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room (1807)

Curatorial text by Thais Bignardi Engstrom

Opening Reception → 18 Sept 2026, 6–8pm
The exhibition will be accompanied by events to be announced.

For further information, please contact info@abrimars.com. 
 

ABOUT THE ARTIST → Stephanie Lucchese (b 1991 São Paulo, Brazil, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York)'s approach focuses on volume, structure, and depth to create arrangements beyond traditional frameworks. Her images incorporate hedonistic themes inspired by gothic and decadent literature of the late 19th-century with sensual scenes of leisure, sexual expression, and macabre undertones. Drawing from the subconscious, Lucchese’s work resists fixed interpretations, presenting figures and spaces that shift between indulgence and decay. Solo exhibitions include Nuns fret not, ABRI MARS, New York (2026); Play, Yehudi Hollander-Pappi, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Petisco, Projeto Vênus, São Paulo, Brazil (2023). Lucchese participated in group exhibitions internationally, including Supernova 1572, Yehudi Hollander-Pappi, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Na Ponta da Língua, Espaço Alto, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); A Sense of Place, ABRI MARS, New York (2025); Pathways, Mama Projects, New York (2024); Soft Machine, IRL, New York (2021); GIFC NYC, The Hole, New York (2019), among others. Residencies include Cité internationale des arts, Paris, France (2026) and SVA Summer Residency, School of Visual Arts, New York (2019). Lucchese's studies include Acompanhamento de Pintura: Painting and Critical Studies with artists Regina Parra and Rodolpho Parigi (2018); Art History Post-grad, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP), São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Bachelor of Fine Arts, Visual Arts, Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP), São Paulo, Brazil (2017).

ABOUT ABRI MARS → Since opening in September 2024, ABRI MARS has promoted early-career and underrecognized artists whose practices are informed by international and polycultural backgrounds. Emphasizing deeply intimate, conceptually rigorous disciplines, the gallery centers these perspectives through focused exhibitions, diverse programming, and cross-cultural exchange. Located in New York’s Lower East Side, the gallery’s intimate space provides a site for somatic presence.

For additional details and inquiries on available works, please contact info@abrimars.com.