Sam Moyer
Ferns Teeth
Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY
Following on the heels of the publication of her first career-spanning monograph, Sam Moyer’s solo exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum will showcase the artist’s relationship to material and light as a throughline in her practice, displaying the range of her processes, and bodies of work, across three galleries. Focusing each space on a specific material relationship, Moyer presents us with a large-scale stone painting tailor-fit to the architecture of the room, sculptural photographs whose composition are specific to the landscape of Eastern Long Island, and a series of smaller, more representational wall works. Consistent with Moyer’s habit of manifesting a directly tactile experience with the visual materials at hand, two of the three galleries will be outfitted with artist-made marble benches and visitors will be able to play on hand-cast concrete backgammon boards in the Museum’s lobby.
Since 2008, Sam Moyer has developed a distinctive language of abstraction that considers questions of value, labor, and beauty. Her practice has evolved from its more conceptual and process-based origins to address formal and theoretical issues regarding the construct of painting. Examining traditional roles of painting and sculpture, Moyer reframes the painted surface as a sculptural field in which fragments of previously used stone are paired with hand-painted canvas to create dynamic compositions. She manipulates these found textures and materials into powerful and evocative abstract works that evince beauty, humor, balance, and chance, employing the hand-made and readymade.
Sam Moyer: Ferns Teeth is organized by Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education and Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, with additional support from Kaitlin Halloran, Assistant Curator and Publications Coordinator.