Sam Moyer, MGM, Installation view
JOAN is pleased to present Sam Moyer: MGM, a site-specific installation by New York-based artist Sam Moyer, produced in collaboration with the artist’s father, Mike G. Moyer.
In her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Moyer departs from her sustained practice in painting-related and architectural-inspired sculpture for a more performative and experimental collaboration. She is best known for her formal, subtly beautiful objects that combine industrial and natural materials such as rough cast-off marble, painted glass, metal, and delicate hand-dyed fabric. At JOAN, Moyer finds inspiration for MGM in the cinematic backdrop of Los Angeles and her own family history with Hollywood. The exhibition title is a reference to her father’s initials and the major Hollywood film studio, Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Moyer lived much of her childhood in Los Angeles where her father and collaborator, Mike Moyer, spent a career as a gaffer in the electrical departments of major Hollywood productions. His credits include Risky Business (1983), The Breakfast Club (1985), Groundhog Day (1993) and The Fighter (2010) among others in a decades-long curriculum vitae. With nods to the city of Los Angeles, her father’s creative output, and JOAN’s relevance as a performance venue, the artist borrows equipment and instruments from her father’s profession. MGM utilizes cinematic lighting effects to illuminate floor-to-ceiling scrims that take advantage of JOAN’s high-vaulted ceilings and serve as a surface for projections and dynamic plays of light and shadow. Mike Moyer has rigged the lighting and designed the electrical schematic of the installation.
For more, visit joanlosangeles.org