Sam Moyer

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 blankets—their off-kilter color combinations, the patterns of their stitching—while 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

— Colby Chamberlain