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Carrie Moyer

,

Carrie Moyer

  • Biography
  • Series
  • Exhibitions
  • Other Exhibitions
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  • Biography
    Carrie Moyer, 2024. Photo: Thomas Brunot
    Carrie Moyer, 2024. Photo: Thomas Brunot

    Carrie Moyer (b. 1960) was born in Detroit, MI, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her vibrant paintings and works on paper critically interrogate the formal and conceptual conventions of painting while embracing an approach to abstraction rooted in optical pleasure. Moyer’s playful compositions, layered surfaces, and fluid forms, which freely oscillate between abstraction and representation, speak not only to her commitment to feminist political theory, but also to her deep investment in art history. As she explains, “What is political about my painting is its basis in my own experience. The work engages the history of 20th-century painting from the margins, a position defined by humor, exuberance, and disruption.”

    Download Artist's CV (PDF, opens in a new tab.)

    Moyer studied modern dance at Bennington College before receiving her BFA from Pratt Institute, an MA in computer graphic design from New York Institute of Technology, and an MFA in painting from Bard College. While at Pratt, Moyer interned at Heresies, the seminal feminist journal on art and politics. After graduating, Moyer continued her social activism, creating a series of agitprop posters and works on paper. This early body of work, which explored the representation of queer women in mainstream media, led to the formation of Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!; 1991–2004), a collaborative public art project with the photographer Sue Schaffner. Inserting imagery of borderline stereotypical lesbian identity into various commercial contexts, Moyer and Schaffner plastered high-volume poster campaigns across the city. Often pasting over existing advertisements with their own agitprop images that centered and celebrated queer women, DAM! challenged the heteronormative nature of societal representation. Upon returning to painting, Moyer recalls, “part of the friction was how could I bring the sentiment and urgency of the agitprop I’d made for queer organizations and Dyke Action Machine! into the studio. How does one render it through abstraction?”

    Moyer’s history of social activism informs her approach to painting, which marries the graphic flatness of her posters with the more sensual material qualities of the medium. Expanding on processes common to Color Field painters, her practice involves drawing, pouring, staining, rolling, sprinkling, and mopping. At the same time, Moyer also employs strategies and techniques found in graphic design. Achieving multidimensional effects through gradation, transparency, and shadows, Moyer builds her images layer-by-layer, using thin veils of aqueous color, mirrored images, and outlined biomorphic forms. Her techniques obfuscate her paintings’ making to forward an unfettered, sensorial approach to looking—one divorced from the technical mechanics of construction. Further emphasizing the sensorial, since 1999, Moyer has incorporated glitter into her work. For the artist, glitter injects the “material language of queerness” into her compositions. “For me, glitter signified disco and gay icons such as Sylvester,” she explains. “… [Glitter represented] this other part of my life that seemingly didn’t jive with the seriousness of a painting practice.” Decades later, glitter has become a signature element in her paintings that, per Moyer, “draws a different kind of light to the canvas.” 

    Just as Moyer combines different techniques and media in her paintings, so too does she draw on a variety of source material to inform her compositions. Alluding to the natural world, yet transcending specific references, her approach centers feminist ideologies while simultaneously recalling the unexpected juxtapositions of Surrealists, who, like Moyer, sought to establish “new relationships, and new possibilities.” As the writer and critic Lauren O’Neill-Butler summarizes, “Moyer recommits to form and formalism in order to blow both up—that is, to show how abstraction is never really a retreat from gender or identity but rather one way of opening up new and exhilarating ideas about embodiment.” 

    Ultimately for Moyer, the disparate bodies of work that define her extensive practice, the agitprop posters and paintings, are one and the same. Together, they shed light onto gender politics while also expanding and destabilizing traditional notions of abstraction. The artist concludes, “The posters and paintings share a declarative, public-facing voice that is transmitted through the use of symmetry and other framing devices, melding the idealistic fervor of twentieth-century abstraction and agitprop with a metaphysics of the lesbian body.” 

    Moyer’s work has been widely exhibited in one-person and group presentations, including Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times, Portland Museum of Art, ME (2020), traveled to Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2021); Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); traveled to Canzani Center Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design, OH (2014); and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2014); Carrie Moyer: Interstellar, Worcester Art Museum, MA (2012); and Carrie Moyer: Painting Propaganda, American University Museum at the Katzen Center for the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2009), among others. Other recent exhibitions include Queer Abstraction, Des Moines Art Center, IA (2019), traveled to Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS (2019); Aftereffect: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Painting, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO (2019); Inherent Structures, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2018); Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Agitprop!, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2015), among others. The artist’s works are represented in prominent collections, including Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Des Moines Art Center, IA; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, Perugia, Italy (2019); National Academician, National Academy of Design (2019); American Academy of Arts & Letters (2018); Guggenheim Fellowship (2013): Anonymous Was A Woman (2009); and Art Matters Fellowship (1994). Moyer is a Professor and the Co-Director of the graduate studio program at Hunter College in New York. She is also on the Board of Governors at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

  • Series

    • Agitprop
      Pages

      Agitprop

      After receiving her BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, Carrie Moyer created a series of agitprop posters and works on paper. This early body of work, which explored the...
    • Paintings
      Pages

      Paintings

      Carrie Moyer’s history of social activism informs her approach to painting, which marries the graphic flatness of her earlier agitprop posters with the more sensual material qualities of the medium....
    • Works on Paper
      Pages

      Works on Paper

      As in her paintings, Carrie Moyer combines different techniques and media in her works on paper, drawing on a variety of source material to inform her compositions. Working on paper,...
  • Exhibitions
    • Carrie Moyer

      Carrie Moyer

      Timber! September 12 - October 26, 2024 New York
      Alexander Gray Associates, New York presents Carrie Moyer: Timber! , the artist’s first solo exhibition with the Gallery. Moyer’s new abstract paintings and works on paper speak to the sensations...
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    • I Spy

      I Spy

      June 23 - August 27, 2023 Germantown
      Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown presents I Spy , a group exhibition of paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Jennie Jieun Lee , Carrie Moyer , and Betty Parsons ....
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    • Count of Three

      Count of Three

      April 18 - May 24, 2019 New York
      Alexander Gray Associates presented Count of Three , a survey of abstract painting from the 1960s to the present that takes structure—both formal and metaphysical—as a position to work within...
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  • Other Exhibitions

    • Carrie Moyer & Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times, Museum of Arts and Design
      Exhibitions

      Carrie Moyer & Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times

      Museum of Arts and Design May 22, 2021 - February 6, 2022
      Carrie Moyer's two-person exhibition Carrie Moyer & Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. The Museum of Arts and Design's press...
    • Queer Abstraction, Des Moines Art Center
      Exhibitions

      Queer Abstraction

      Des Moines Art Center June 1 - September 8, 2019
      Harmony Hammond and Carrie Moyer included in the group exhibition Queer Abstraction , curated by Jared Ledesma, at the Des Moines Art Center, IA. The Des Moines Art Center's press...
    • Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art
      Exhibitions

      Whitney Biennial 2017

      Whitney Museum of American Art March 17 - June 11, 2017
      Carrie Moyer included in the Whitney Biennial 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. The Whitney Museum of American Art's press release follows: The 2017 Whitney...
    • The Three Graces: Polly Apfelbaum, Tony Feher and Carrie Moyer, Everson Museum of Art
      Exhibitions

      The Three Graces: Polly Apfelbaum, Tony Feher and Carrie Moyer

      Everson Museum of Art September 25, 2015 - January 3, 2016
      Carrie Moyer included in the group exhibition Three Graces: Polly Apfelbaum, Tony Feher and Carrie Moyer at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY. The Everson Museum of Art's press...
    • Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, Rose Art Museum
      Exhibitions

      Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler

      Rose Art Museum February 11 - June 7, 2015
      Harmony Hammond and Carrie Moyer included in the group exhibition Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. The Rose Art Museum's...
    • Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum
      Exhibitions

      Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny

      Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum January 26 - May 19, 2013
      Carrie Moyer's one-person exhibition Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum's...
    • Carrie Moyer: Interstellar, Worcester Art Museum
      Exhibitions

      Carrie Moyer: Interstellar

      Worcester Art Museum February 19 - August 19, 2012
      Carrie Moyer's solo exhibition Carrie Moyer: Interstellar at the Worcester Art Museum, MA. The Worcester Art Museum's press release follows: Carrie Moyer’s painting practice over the past two decades has...
  • Public Collections
    Carrie Moyer
    Pirate Jenny, 2012
    Acrylic and graphite on canvas
    Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Birmingham Museum of Art, AL
    Des Moines Art Center, IA
    Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
    Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
    The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
    Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, University of Richmond, VA
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
    Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA
    Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
    Portland Museum of Art, ME
    Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
    Springfield Art Museum, MO
    Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
    Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
    Worcester Art Museum, MA

  • Videos
    • Carrie Moyer

      Carrie Moyer

      The Tang Teaching Museum February 13, 2013
      In her New York City Studio, Carrie Moyer talks about pivotal events in her life that brought her to painting, and the influence history has had in her work. For the past two decades, Carrie Moyer's paintings have boldly merged political imagery, abstraction, and unapologetic visual pleasure. Complex and seductive, her paintings layer overlapping, biomorphic forms, vibrant colors, and a diversity of textures. They are also richly loaded with a range of historical, stylistic, and physical references that include Color Field, Social Realist, and Surrealist paintings, 1960s and '70s counter...
      Watch
  • News / Events
    • Harmony Hammond, Carrie Moyer, and Joan Semmel

      Harmony Hammond, Carrie Moyer, and Joan Semmel

      Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis September 12, 2025–January 5, 2026
      Carrie Moyer, Harmony Hammond, and Joan Semmel are included in the group exhibition Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on view from September 12, 2025–January 5, 2026.
      Read more
    • Kang Seung Lee, Carrie Moyer, and Hugh Steers

      Kang Seung Lee, Carrie Moyer, and Hugh Steers

      a field at bloom and hum at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College February 14–July 20, 2025
      Carrie Moyer, Kang Seung Lee, and Hugh Steers are included in the group exhibition a field at bloom and hum at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, New York, on view from February 14–July 20, 2025.
      Read more
    • Carrie Moyer in conversation with Lex Morgan Lancaster

      Carrie Moyer in conversation with Lex Morgan Lancaster

      Alexander Gray Associates September 28, 2024, 2:00–4:00 PM
      Join us at Alexander Gray Associates, New York for a conversation between artist Carrie Moyer and art historian and curator Lex Morgan Lancaster on Saturday,...
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    • Harmony Hammond, Carrie Moyer, and Joan Semmel

      Harmony Hammond, Carrie Moyer, and Joan Semmel

      Making Their Mark Curated by Cecilia Alemani at Shah Garg Foundation November 2, 2023—March 23, 2024

      Harmony Hammond, Carrie Moyer, and Joan Semmel are included in a group exhibition, Making Their Mark Curated by Cecilia Alemani at the Shah Garg Foundation, New York.

      Read more
    • Announcing Representation of Carrie Moyer

      Announcing Representation of Carrie Moyer

      Alexander Gray Associates June 15, 2023

      Alexander Gray Associates announces representation of Carrie Moyer (b. 1960). Moyer's vibrant paintings and works on paper critically interrogate the formal and conceptual conventions of painting while embracing an approach to abstraction rooted in optical pleasure.

      Read more
  • Articles / Reviews
    • Installation view at Alexander Gray Associates. Photo courtesy of the gallery.

      Carrie Moyer: Timber! At Alexander Gray Associates

      Art Spiel
      October 24, 2024 Carrie Moyer’s solo show Timber! is her debut with the renowned Alexander Gray Associates gallery in New York City. Her...
    • In the children’s sitting room, an artwork by Carrie Moyer overlooks a sofa designed by Lucien Rees Roberts, a pair of Isamu Noguchi tables, and a swivel lounge chair by Ben Swildens for Stabin Bennis; the rug is by Crosby Street Studios. PHOTO: ERIC PETSCHEK

      This Modernist Masterpiece in the Hamptons Proves That Opposites Attract

      Galerie Magazine
      June 2, 2023 Out near the tip of New York’s Long Island, in the town of Bridgehampton, architect Steven Harris has created an...
    • "Brainiac," 2017, (detail) Acrylic and glitter on canvas

      How LGBTQ+ Artists Use Abstraction to Move Past Labels

      Artsy
      June 1, 2023 Figurative art has been hot for quite a few years now, but it’s always been widely popular. That’s partly because,...
    • Studio view of (left to right) "Love You Tammy Faye," "The Origin of Glitter," "Knock Off," and "Leda Was a Swan," 2022.

      Carrie Moyer by Bruce Pearson

      BOMB Magazine
      January 25, 2023 I’ve followed New York painter Carrie Moyer’s work for a couple of decades, and it’s been exciting to see her...
    • A flyer designed by Carrie Moyer, collection of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

      Frustrated by society's erasure, the Lesbian Avengers fought back

      NPR
      June 24, 2022 When Yusef Hawkins, a 16-year-old Black teenager, was ambushed and murdered by a white mob in 1989, it drew attention...
    • Photograph courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design

      “Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Time

      The New Yorker
      June 1, 2022 The Museum of Arts and Design’s spirited exhibition “Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times,” on view through...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Arrangement #9," 2021. Mixed media and collage on paper, 20 3/16 x 14 1/16 inches. Courtesy the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York.

      Carrie Moyer: Morphologies

      The Brooklyn Rail
      May 1, 2022 In fifteen mixed-media collages on view now at DC Moore, Carrie Moyer shifts the boisterous abstract compositions for which she’s...
    • View of "Tabernacles for Trying Times," 2021–22, at the Museum of Arts and Design, showing Parlor for the People, 2020. Photo Jenna Bascom/Courtesy Museum of Arts and Design, New York

      Webs of Relation: Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe at the Museum of Arts and Design

      Art in America
      April 14, 2022 'Tabernacles for Trying Times' at the Museum of Arts and Design was a drifting survey of the work of painter...
    • Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe, "Carries a Soft Stick," 2016. Oil paint, wood, cut plastic bag, and glitter on canvas, 47 x 44 x 3 inches. © the artists. Courtesy Alan Weiner.

      Carrie Moyer & Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times

      The Brooklyn Rail
      September 1, 2021 An artist couple for some 25 years, Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe are best known for their queer and feminist...
    • "Reverie (There's a Hole in My Bucket Dear Liza)," 2021, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 78 x 96 inches

      Carrie Moyer on New Work, Teaching, and Art-Making in a Pandemic

      Bmore Art
      April 27, 2021 More studio time: Something artists crave and structure their lives around, in hopes of getting one more hour or one...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Pet My Leaf," 2020, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 78 x 60".

      Critics' Picks: Carrie Moyer

      Artforum
      April 23, 2021 During Net art’s heyday, Dyke Action Machine!, a lesbian interventionist public-art project cofounded by graphic designer and painter Carrie Moyer...
    • Carrie Moyer, left, and Sheila Pepe. Photo: Taylor Dafoe.

      How Can You Make Art for ‘Trying Times’? For the Longtime Artist Couple Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe, It’s All About Teamwork

      Artnet News
      March 17, 2020 Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe, partners in life and—occasionally—art, met in 1995 at the Skowhegan residency in Maine. Now, a...
    • “Opera Buffa,” by Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe.

      Art review: Activist artist couple’s PMA exhibit both playful and provocative

      Portland Press Herald
      March 8, 2020 Activist art often gets a bad rap. The term can conjure images of in-your-face, fist-pumping political protest, the loud and...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Intergalactic Emoji Factory" (2016). Photo courtesy of the Portland Museum of Art, Maine.

      Here Are 21 Highly Anticipated, Mind-Expanding Museum Exhibitions to Seek Out Across the US in 2020

      Artnet News
      January 6, 2020 “ Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times ” at the Portland Museum of Art , Maine Partners...
    • Arthur Peña Has Seen the Future—and New York artist Carrie Moyer is an intriguing part of it.

      Patron Magazine
      January 5, 2019 For 2019, Peña is working with another New York– based artist, Carrie Moyer, who is represented by DC Moore in...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Martha Graham's Candy Stripers," 2017. Acrylic and glitter on canvas 96 x 78 inches. Courtesy DC Moore Gallery.

      CARRIE MOYER: "Pagan’s Rapture" and "Seismic Shuffle"

      The Brooklyn Rail
      April 4, 2018 Times are queer in Carrie Moyer’s twin exhibitions at DC Moore and Mary Boone Galleries, where the New York-based painter...
    • Carrie Moyer, “Aegean Knees” (2017), acrylic on canvas, 72 by 60 inches (images courtesy DC Moore Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery, New York)

      Carrie Moyer Reaches for the Stars

      Hyperallergic
      March 10, 2018 With an acclaimed appearance in the last Whitney Biennial, and now two concurrent one-person exhibitions at DC Moore and Mary...
    • Works by Carrie Moyer in the 2017 Whitney Biennial (photo by Benjamin Sutton/Hyperallergic)

      The Multifarious Feminism of the Whitney Biennial

      Hyperallergic
      May 12, 2017 Could we consider the 2017 Whitney Biennial a feminist exhibition? Twenty-five of the 63 artists in the show are women....
    • Carrie Moyer’s “Belvedere,” from 2016, part of a show of new paintings at D­C Moore that explores competing energies.

      Review: Carrie Moyer’s Conflagration of Canvases

      The New York Times
      March 24, 2016 Carrie Moyer’s new paintings bring to mind the opening lines of Robert Frost’s famous epigram, “Fire and Ice,” hinting at...
    • Carrie Moyer, “Intergalactic Emoji Factory” (2015), acrylic and glitter on canvas, 72 x 96 inches (all images courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York)

      Beer with a Painter: Carrie Moyer

      Hyperallergic
      February 20, 2016 When Carrie Moyer and I decided to have a conversation, her recent paintings were already at DC Moore Gallery, where...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Pirate Jenny," 2013; acrylic and graphite on canvas, 72 by 72 inches.

      Identity Concealed in Paint: Carrie Moyer at SCAD Museum

      Burnaway
      June 20, 2014 Viewers who already know Carrie Moyer’s body of work will find the exhibition “Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny ” comforting in...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Stroboscopic Painting #1," 2011, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 60 x 72″.

      Carrie Moyer

      Artforum
      December 1, 2011 After receiving her BFA in painting from the Pratt Institute in 1985, Carrie Moyer became somewhat disenchanted with her chosen...
    • Carrie Moyer, "Down Underneath," 2011, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 72".

      Critics' Picks: Carrie Moyer

      Artforum
      September 14, 2011 Bouleversant is an idiomatic French word that denotes with extraordinary precision the sensation you may encounter while visiting Carrie Moyer’s...
    • Carrie Moyer: "Tableau," 2008, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 90 by 66 inches; at Canada.

      Carrie Moyer

      Art in America
      October 22, 2009 Carrie Moyer re-creates, or more exactly reimagines, a particular style: a Gallic Anglo-American mid-20th-century modern (as distinct from modernism), a...

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