Sam Moyer: More Weight
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sam Moyer: More Weight
April 26 – June 22, 2014
Opening reception: Saturday, April 26, 6-8pm
Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present a show of new work by Sam Moyer that will occupy both floors of the gallery's new 170 Suffolk St location. For her third solo show at the gallery, Moyer will present a series of works that shift dramatically in scale, material, and perception, while continuing her interest in the ‘in-betweens’ of genre; obscuring distinctions between drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and architecture. The show's title, "More Weight” is Giles Corey’s rebellious deadpan request as he is pressed to death by stone slabs, recalled by Arthur Miller in The Crucible. The quote evokes the physicality of Moyer’s work, but also the interior, contradictory struggle of its constitution.
A monumental site-specific installation on the ground floor probes materiality in relation to light and its polarization of form. An immense structure raises a marble surface half a foot above the gallery floor while an overhead light source passes through a dyed fabric and establishes an atmosphere of underexposure. Light, acting a singular volume, fuses tactile form with optical experience. Dominating the square footage of the room, the platform is at once a pedestal, stage, and floor. Visitors to the space become active elements in Moyer’s play of light and surface. This assimilation of the viewer allows the aesthetic experience to become experiential.
For a new body of wall works that mine the polarities within weight and scale, Moyer adapts remnant slabs of marble, castaways from interior design projects and pairs them with dyed pieces of fabric mounted to wood. The fabric and wood portion caters to the incidental edge of the stone remnant. The visual rhyme of stone to faux-geologic painting highlights the discrete characteristics of each element while establishing a natural link between them. The fabric assumes the weight of stone while the stone itself floats light as cloth against the gallery wall. They become equal partners, transcending their own materiality. The illusion is broken only in the contrast of the surfaces reflection of light.
In another body of work, Moyer combines sheets of painted glass over colored acrylic sheets or dyed fabric, framed in polished brass. Light travels past the painted surface and exposes the preceding layers, producing a conglomerate image. These meta-photographic images depend on light and allude tob the psychological depth of stained glass windows. Ultimately, the pieces become windows of their own—implying a depth that isn’t there.
“We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.” —Robert Walser
Sam Moyer has exhibited with the Public Art Fund, New York, MoMA PS1, New York, LAND, Los Angeles, Tensta konsthall, Stockholm, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Société, Berlin, Autocenter, Berlin, Bugada & Cargnel, Paris, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, Nils Stærk, Copenhagen, and Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, among many other venues. Moyer is included in upcoming exhibitions at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin and The Drawing Center, New York. She received her MFA from Yale. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
