Sam Moyer: Flowers

Comprising eight wall works and one outdoor sculpture, Flowers marks Moyer’s initial foray into figurative representation. Flowers, a symbol of growth and the transience of nature, are represented here in hard and lasting stone, merging temporality and transience with permanence and solidity.

Over the past five years, Moyer has embraced the tension between painting and sculpture through the process of fitting repurposed stone into hand painted canvas mounted to MDF panel. In Flowers the artist assembles found scraps into floral forms that look strikingly naturalistic while retaining the improvisational quality of past works. Moyer’s flowers, inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s plant drawings, have a hand-drawn quality—line, contrast, and design are essential pictorial elements. Slower and quieter than their precursors and comprised of smaller fragments, the works on view in Flowers build on the goal of balanced composition via improvised geometry toward the additional end of resemblance through representation.

As Moyer demonstrates the illusory possibilities of stone without altering its status as found scrap material, memory plays a role. No sculpting in the traditional sense of molding or chiseling occurs, instead the picture results from a conscious spontaneity born of reflection. Moyer arranges pieces of slate and marble until they satisfy her figurative requirements. Playfully worded titles like Bucknell Bougainvillea and Magnolia Blvd. recall the significance of floral imagery in Los Angeles, where Moyer grew up. Through her intervention stone becomes a symbol of delicacy, beauty, and femininity.

Outside the gallery, a free standing sculpture continues the project of challenging medium-specificity. Two human-sized stone monoliths lean against each other secured by a Japanese joint usually reserved for woodcraft.

Sam Moyer: Flowers, May 11 - July 6, 2019