Wands and Cornichons, 2016. Acrylic and glitter on canvas, 96 x 78 inches
Gego’s Asteroid (2017) [p. 25] features a similarly dark, celestial background. While at first glance it appears to be a portrait, due to Moyer’s close cropping of its titular subject, the painting features a glittery surface and marbled pools of paint that give it an ornamental flair, transfiguring the cosmic object into a decorative detail. Moyer’s cosmos is ripe with textured, haptic materiality; the asteroid looks less like a rock and more like a blazing ball of gooey gold and viscous orange glitter, and it features delicate white branches (reminiscent of works by its namesake, Gego, the late Venezuelan sculptor) topped with black, hairball-like blobs. The close-up view provides an unusual perspective (when was the last time you were face to face with an astronomical object?) and, with it, the revelation that looking so closely at something can shift the way it is perceived: Is that an asteroid headed toward earth, or is it a sparkly chandelier? “My paintings are often a reflection of my having a feeling,” Moyer says, “and then making fun of myself for it.”3 Which is another way of saying her paintings often embody emotional dissonance and the potential for humor in such internal contradictions. She has long been inspired by the way nature has been taken up in the decorative arts—the recurrence of motifs such as flowers and foliage painted on teacups, say, or fashioned out of iron to make elaborate gates. Several of the new works play with these traditional motifs in a lighthearted way. In Hot Metal Twice (2017) [p. 5], a black gate decorated with Art Nouveau-style vines and leaves dramatically frames an unnerving, orange-blue glow that suggests a distant campfire in the woods at night. There is a Brothers
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