“These works made ‘of’ not ‘on’ paper, represents for Moyer a return to form as well as a step forward, with her earliest interests in the properties of the photographic image informing this new work in subtle and significant ways. When asked if, in addition the material itself, the physical conditions and spaces at Dieu Donné contributed to her working methodology or thought processes, Moyer noted that she was thinking about the mimicry of light and shadow in photography with this handmade process and using different types of pulp to allow light to flow through the work and create a type of 3D rendering of a photographic space.”

—Excerpt from Sam Moyer: A New Material, A New Doorway by Jeffrey Grove, for Sam Moyer Lab Grant Publication No. 20 , Dieu Donné

About the Artist

Inspired equally by nature and architecture, cinema and literature, Moyer has over the course of a fifteen-year career, produced a highly evocative body of work across a broad range of natural and industrial media, ranging from stone to canvas, metal, and glass. Acutely attuned to subtle nuances of color, tone, and light, and the dynamics of space that her works occupy, Moyer’s interest in materiality and the relationship between organic and constructed form drives a practice unrestricted by traditional notions of beauty, or distinctions between painting and sculpture. She produces work on both a monumental and intimate scale, embracing absence and presence, and balance and chance, to create powerfully expressive forms.

Sam Moyer (b. 1983, Chicago, Illinois) earned a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale University. Her work has been featured in national and international exhibitions at the Bass Museum, Miami, Florida; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri; the Drawing Center, New York; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; the Hill Art Foundation, New York; LAND, Los Angeles; MoMA PS1, Queens; the Parrish Art Museum, New York; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; and White Flag Projects, St.Louis, Missouri. Recent one-person exhibitions include Circle of Confusion (2023) at Blum & Poe, LA, Memory Mine (2023) at the Jule Collins Smith Museum, Auburn, Relief (2022) at Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Good Friend (2021) at Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles, and Tone (2021) at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. Her large-scale outdoor sculpture Doors for Doris (2020), commissioned by Public Art Fund, was on view in the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park, New York from September 2020 – October 2021. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts; the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX; the Morgan Library, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. Moyer currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

In the Studio

Photographs of Moyer and Studio Collaborators at Dieu Donné by Murray Hall, 2025

Additional Links

Hill Art Foundation | Woman with Holes

Sean Kelly | Subject to Change

For the Artist Sam Moyer, Inspiration Was Set in Stone | New York Times

Artist’s Website