Sam Moyer

The first book on painter and sculptor Sam Moyer, best known for her unique practice of combining remnants of stone and natural materials inlaid into painted canvas, creating powerfully expressive works.

Sam Moyer has developed a distinctive language of abstraction, creating paintings, structures, and sculptural objects that draw inspiration from architectural space and natural materials. Recognized for a diverse practice in which she unites found textures and objects in innovative ways, Moyer crafts compelling hybrids, often combining hand-painted fabrics with repurposed marble, slate, and stone that carry textural imperfections reflecting industrial design processes. Her practice has evolved from its more conceptual and process-based origins to address formal and theoretical issues regarding the construct of painting. In all her productions, issues of scale and space remain critical. Moyer is particularly interested in the way architecture functions in tandem with her objects to create dynamic visual experiences.

In this volume, the artist’s first monograph, curators Renaud Proch and Scout Hutchinson contribute the first extended critical essay on the artist’s art and career, identifying key works and exhibitions of the last ten years and detailing her artistic trajectory. Artist and writer Ross Simonini, who has known Moyer for a decade, contributes an in-depth interview with the artist, and noted novelist Kaitlyn Greenidge offers a poetic reading of Moyer’s artwork.

Kaitlyn Greenidge’s debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books), was one of the New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, Buzzfeed, Transition Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Believer, and American Short Fiction. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently Features Director at Harper’s Bazaar as well as a contributing writer for the New York Times. Her second novel, Libertie (Algonquin Books), was published in 2021. Scout Hutchinson is a curator, researcher, and writer based in New York. She has provided cura­torial support to numerous art institutions, includ­ing deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She served as a research assistant for Hauser & Wirth Institute’s catalogue raisonné of Franz Kline's paintings, and in 2021 was an inaugural research fellow with the Holt/Smithson Foundation. Renaud Proch is Executive and Artistic Director of Independent Curators International (ICI), an organization dedicated to advancing the work of curators to create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and inter­national engagement. Before joining ICI in 2009, he was senior director of the Project gallery in New York, as well as director of MC in Los Angeles. He is a co-founder of the Backroom, an evolving archive of artists’ source materials and itinerant research project, and of ART2102, an independent art space in Los Angeles (2003–11). Ross Simonini is a multidisciplinary artist, working in painting, writing, music, performance, and dia­logues. He has held exhibitions of his work at the Sharjah Biennial 13, anonymous gallery, Et al., Shoot the Lobster, Jack Hanley Gallery, and Human Resources. He has released many albums of music, under his own name and with collaborators. His first novel, The Book of Formation, was published in 2018 (Melville House Books).