
Sam Moyer
Sean Kelly Gallery

Sam Moyer’s first solo show in New York, “Night Moves,” took place in 2008 at Cleopatra’s, the independent storefront space in Greenpoint founded that year by Bridget Donahue, Bridget Finn, Kate McNamara, and Erin Somerville. There, Moyer presented five “paintings” made of stretcher bars wrapped in moving blankets. Appropriately enough, Moyer had first become interested in the formal qualities of moving blanketstheir off-kilter color combinations, the patterns of their stitchingwhile assisting the artist Mika Tajima, who at the time had taken to displaying paintings in the kind of wooden storage racks typically found in a gallery’s back room. In much the same way that Tajima’s installations pointed to painting’s commercial function as salable inventory, Moyer’s ready-to-ship ensemble acknowledged the art handlers responsible for facilitating its transit.
Moyer’s

Artforum print subscribers have full access to this article. If you are a subscriber, sign in below.
Not registered for artforum.com?
SUBSCRIBE NOW for only $50 a year—65% off the newsstand price—and receive the print magazine plus full online access to this issue and our archive.*
Order the PRINT EDITION of the January 2018 issue for $17 or the ONLINE EDITION for $5.99.
* This rate applies to U.S. domestic subscriptions.