Working across painting, sculpture, and architecture, Sam Moyer investigates the interaction between natural and constructed worlds, while expanding established categories of media and materials. She frequently uses industrial components, such as discarded stone fragments, in her work, simultaneously evoking levity and weight, stasis and movement. 

Trestle Turn is part of a series of wall-based works the artist has been making since 2020 in which she inlays remnants of stone into painted canvas. This work features slabs of repurposed marble surrounded by a painted blue-green field. The title references the structural framework of a trestle, a horizontal beam used to support a bridge or table. Moyer extends her interest in architectural connotations through her use of materials such as plaster, a mixture of ground stone and water. Applying plaster to the canvas prior to painting, Moyer either leaves its coarse texture or, as in this work, sands it down to a smooth, matte finish. The artist appreciates how the material can be manipulated to either soak up or repel pigment and how, similar to stone, its surface can reflect or absorb light. Between the sheen of the marble and the matte surface of the canvas, the alternating textures establish a subtle interplay of light, visible when the viewer physically moves around the work. 

About the artist: Sam Moyer (b. 1983, Chicago, IL) earned her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design (2005) and her MFA from the Yale School of Art (2007). Moyer’s work has been exhibited at the Drawing Center, New York; the Bass Museum, Miami; University of Albany Art Museum, Albany, NY; the Public Art Fund, New York; White Flag Projects and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO; LAND, Los Angeles; and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden. Works by the artist are held in major national and international collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Morgan Library, New York; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, MA; the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris, France; and the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon. Moyer lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.