Carrie Moyer & Les Rogers — Suzanne Tarasieve, Marais Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 12 → June 23, 2012

For her first Parisian exhibition, Carrie Moyer continues her particular blend of hybridized biomorphic abstraction with expansive panache. In a series of works that make the painterʼs careful choreographies look effortless, Moyerʼs deft paint application dazzles in glossy licks and nacreous spills, pinned down with opaque stenciled forms that she lays down in ringing reds and graphic lamp blacks. Moyerʼs in-house painting jokes are nuanced to the point of discretion here, while her introduction of a graphite crayon line softened with water brings drawing into the work and eases her crisp graphic edges. Moyerʼs elegant use of paint is as pointed as her art historical homages are generous. She constructs her images through intellectual strata, quoting surfaces from Max Ernst, Colourfield, Constructivist, Situationist and Disco (!) as befits the form. In earlier works, Moyer cites concrete political events and figures through iconic symbols, but avoids the trap of dating the work through its specificity. In these new works, Moyer edges away from the political imagery she is known for and looks to bright ideas of Americana. Figural intimations remain though, with clues thrown up by her titles. Teasing suggestions of female genitalia, bones or Photoshop drop shadows hover through an aesthetic that favours the immediate graphic punch of street poster art. Moyer tests any pictorial legibility however, by embedding her references in asymptotic abstraction; in painterly stages of removal that leave the untouched raw canvas at the ʻbackʼ of the painting and work up to encrustations of surface glitter. Moyerʼs paintings are gripping and witty. Their visual clout hits the bullʼs-eye again and again.