Sam Moyer

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 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.

Exhibition Support
The Sam Moyer exhibition is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of Jacqueline Brody, The Deborah Buck Foundation, Linda Hackett and Melinda Hackett/ CAL Foundation, Sean Kelly, The Evelyn Toll Family Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, Lauren & Stephen P. Schwartz, Yanina and Allan Spivack, Allison and Donald Weiss, and a donor who wishes to remain Anonymous.

The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District. Public Funding provided by Suffolk County.

About Sam Moyer
Sam Moyer (American, b. 1983) received her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and her MFA from Yale University. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Bass Museum, Miami; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; the Drawing Center, New York; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; the Hill Art Foundation, New York; LAND, Los Angeles; MoMA PS1, Queens; the Parrish Art Museum, New York; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and White Flag Projects, St. Louis. Moyer’s large-scale outdoor sculpture Doors for Doris (2020), commissioned by Public Art Fund, was on view in the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park, New York from September 2020 through October 2021. Her recent solo exhibitions include Memory Mine (2023) at the Jule Collins Smith Museum, Auburn; Relief (2022) at Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; Good Friend (2021) at Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles; and Tone (2021) at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.

Moyer’s work is featured in prominent public collections, including the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts; the Morgan Library & Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; and the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris.