In these new paintings, Moyer meditates on the dualities inherent in life—the coexistence of decay and growth, loss and perspective, endings and emergent beginnings. Reflecting on what she describes as a “bifurcation in meaning,” the works are born from trying times, capturing a moment of balance between extremities. 

Sam Moyer’s sculptural wall works combine salvaged stone and painted plaster on canvas to create compositions that blur the boundary between painting and sculpture. By embedding fragments of reclaimed marble into textured, hand-painted surfaces, Moyer highlights the interplay between natural material and artistic intervention.

In the essay, Sam Moyer: A New Material, A New Doorway by Jeffrey Grove, Director, Museums & Publications Director at Sean Kelly states, Moyer embraced the spirit of experimentation and collaboration that the Residency provides to investigate another language of abstraction, one more linear and architectonic than previously manifested in her works on paper. Each sheet is composed of three to five layers of paper pulp, varied in material and color. The array of pulp, all of which is produced onsite, was pulled or lifted from its liquid bath onto a fine-mesh screen to create a thin, even, layer. At this stage, Moyer would then construct her primary forms by removing sections of the material to expose and compose an image. In this additive/reductive process, the screen would then be flipped and pressed onto a felt mat, removing the pulp from the screen face down. Subsequent layers of pulp in various tonalities would then be added in the same manner until the composition was complete.

The Large Payne series, an ongoing body of oil-on-panel paintings initiated in 2020, extends Moyer’s long-standing engagement with the effects of light. Evolving from her earlier Payne works on paper, which she began in 2017, these paintings are unified by a restrained palette dominated by Payne’s Gray—a color that captures the fleeting glow of the “magic hour,” the brief moment between sunset and nightfall when light softens, and contrast intensifies. Reinforcing the sculptural nature of her work, Moyer’s tactile application of oil paint, creates surfaces that shift and transform as the viewer moves.

Concurrent with her exhibition at the gallery, the Hill Art Foundation will present, Woman with Holes, a survey exhibition spanning early dyed canvas works, a monumental stone painting and recent handmade paper works. Presented in dialogue with selections from the Hill Collection, the exhibition examines Moyer’s engagement with abstraction and places her work alongside artists including Robert Gober, Liz Glynn, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, and Isamu Noguchi, from whose sculpture the title of the show is derived. The exhibition opens on Thursday, May 1 from 5-7pm and will be on view through August 1, 2025. We hope you can visit both exhibitions.