Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 5

Born 1960 in Detroit, MI
Lives in Brooklyn, NY

Carrie Moyer’s vibrant paintings unabashedly embrace visual pleasure, juxtaposing luminous, watery veils of paint in bright hues, often mixed with glitter, with precisely outlined areas of flat color. Moyer begins a painting by creating small collages from cut paper, using the bold, graphic shapes as scaffolding for expanses of poured acrylic, a medium she prefers both for its material versatility and its popular connotations: a type of plastic, it gives form to everything from toys to nail polish. Elements in Moyer’s recent paintings suggest architecture at times, or landscape and the body at others. As the artist explains, “I’m interested in abstract painting that is experienced both visually and physically. The forms are constantly shifting from the familiar to the strange in a way that seems to escape words.”