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Carrie Moyer is an artist and writer known for her sumptuous paintings which explore and extend the legacy of American Abstraction, while paying homage to many of its groundbreaking female figures, among them Georgia O’Keeffe, Helen Frankenthaler and Elizabeth Murray. In equal measure abstract and representational, Moyer’s work proposes a kaleidoscopic worldview that embraces the sensual as much the rational. Playful logo-like silhouettes — vessels, towers, portals, meteorological phenomena, plant life, animal and human forms — demarcate arched prosceniums or abstract fields of color. These flattened archetypes and cheeky reference points often perform as compositional rigging around which flow cascades of paint, glitter and light. Whether invoking the natural or constructed world, inventive paint handling and succulent color seem to tempt all of the viewer’s senses, from sight to touch to taste (perhaps even sound!). The resulting spaces — lush and transporting — are uniquely Moyer’s own.
Moyer’s work has been exhibited throughout the US and Europe.
Her paintings were featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Previous museum shows include a traveling survey, Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny, that originated at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; and Interstellar, at the Worcester Art Museum, MA (2012). Between 1991-2008, Moyer and photographer Sue Schaffner collaborated as Dyke Action Machine!, a public art project that humorously dissected mainstream advertising through the insertion of lesbian imagery. Moyer’s writing has appeared in periodicals such as Art in America, Artforum, the Brooklyn Rail and monographs on Louise Fishman and Nancy Grossman.
She has received awards from the Guggenheim and Joan Mitchell Foundations, Anonymous Was a Woman, and Creative Capital among others. Moyer attended Pratt Institute (BFA), Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College (MFA) and the Skowhegan School of Art. She is of the Director of MFA Program in Studio Art at Hunter College. Moyer is represented by DC Moore Gallery in New York City.
The collaborative exhibition mentioned in the interview can be explored through this link to the Portland Museum.
[…] Carrie Moyer spoke from her studio in Brooklyn. Her experience of the pandemic so far has been a combination of things – on one hand she says it isn’t so different from an artist’s usual routine, working alone in a studio – while on the other hand the dark political atmosphere hangs heavy over her head as it does over the heads of many. Presently she is at work on a monograph that will be published in autumn 2021. The monograph will include about 100 color plates of paintings. She is also preparing for a show at DC Moore Gallery in February as well as prepping to re-install a collaborative show she created with her wife called Tabernacles for Trying Times. The exhibition first ran at the Portland Museum of Art and will soon run at Museum of Art and Design in New York in May of 2021. Despite all this work, Moyer speaks to the very surreal moment we are in and how that affects making art and the uncertainty of how art will work going forward. To hear more about these works, including a more in-depth conversation about her collaborative show, listen to the complete interview. […]