Sam Moyer: Slack Tide
For Immediate Release:
Sam Moyer: Slack Tide
March 4 – April 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 6-8 pm
Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present a show of new work by Sam Moyer. For her second solo show at the gallery, Moyer will exhibit pieces that continue her examination of the liminal space between the two- and three-dimensional, albeit in a larger, more imposing scale than her work has explored before. In paintings that hover on the edge of sculpture, and sculpture that hovers on the edge of painting, Moyer recalls the rigorous language of mid-20th-century minimalist art, but also the modest, playful and scattershot material processes of home design projects.
The show’s title, “Slack Tide”, refers to the short interval of time in which the outgoing and incoming tides meet, rendering a body of water still. The tonally muted and yet formally tense push/pull of Moyer’s paintings can be likened to this fleeting moment of deceptive calm. While Moyer has previously appended black and white photographs or Xeroxes to various sculptural elements, in this body of work, these photographic images are replaced by worked-upon raw canvas. Dying the fabric in India ink, setting it to dry in various wrinkled and folded permutations, “drawing” on it with a domestic bleach product (the bleach filling in for light, to form a quasi-photographic pattern) and finally ironing the canvas and adhering it to wood panels, Moyer’s work ultimately takes on a sense of depth, despite its literal flatness. The wood panel becomes a type of wall-mounted pedestal, on which the canvas’ surprisingly baroque pleats and folds take on the role of sculptural object.
In the window sculpture created for this show, Moyer’s fabrics are mounted on one side of wood slats, extending the language of the two- dimensional even further out into the gallery space. Keeping the elevated language of abstract painting at bay, these canvases are subsumed into a low-key, decorative architectural element. This complicity between the sublime and the familiar is what marks Moyer’s work. In their imposing scale, looming over the narrow gallery space, the artist’s tactile works challenge the viewer but also draw her in, calling her to participate and collude.
Sam Moyer has recently exhibited her work at MoMA PS1, Queens, Public Art Fund, New York, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, IMO, Copenhagen, Société, Berlin, and Galleri Tom Christoffersen, Copenhagen, among many other venues. She is currently exhibiting in the permanent collections of Yale University Art Gallery and MAGA Museum, Gallarate, Italy and is exhibiting at the University Art Museum, Albany. She received her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and her MFA from Yale. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
