Valerie Jaudon and Carrie Moyer are two titans of contemporary American abstract painting. Not only do they both teach in the renowned art program at Hunter College in New York City, but they are both represented by the legendary D.C. Moore Gallery in New York as well.
Ms. Jaudon works with carefully drawn line and a tightly controlled application of paint on linen surfaces. Here passion is carefully articulated.
Ms. Moyer paints more loosely using gestures to assert the presence of paint in the canvas. Jaudon uses a quiet palate; Moyer proceeds with bold application of color. Both work in large scale, paintings that invite the viewer to envelope themselves with the work, thus creating a dialogue both physical and spiritual with those who take the time to immerse themselves.
VALERIE JAUDON
“During the course of Jaudon's distinguished forty-year career, she has been committed to redefining the parameters of abstraction. A member of the original Pattern and Decoration group, she is a representative of important tendencies of the larger Postminimalist movement. Jaudon was the driving force behind the influential 1991 Sidney Janis Gallery exhibition, Conceptual Abstraction (reprised and expanded in 2012 in an exhibition in the Hunter College Times Square Galleries, curated by Pepe Karmel and Joachim Pissarro) and has continued to work toward the development of a grammar of abstraction.
Most recently, Jaudon's work has been included in several national and international museum exhibitions focusing on the Pattern and Decoration movement: With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2019-2020); Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2019); Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Vienna, Austria, and Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2018-2019); Pattern, Decoration & Crime, MAMCO, Geneva, Switzerland, and Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2018-2019).
Jaudon is the recipient of numerous awards and grants and her work has been collected by and exhibited in major museums. Among them are The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louise; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany; the Louisiana Museum of Modern art, Humlebaeck, Denmark; Ludwig Forum Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.” - DC MOORE
CARRIE MOYER
“Carrie Moyer’s sumptuous paintings on canvas explore and extend the legacy of American Abstraction while paying homage to many of its seminal female figures among them Helen Frankenthaler, Elizabeth Murray, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Rife with visual precedents, Moyer’s compositions reference Color Field, Pop Art and 1970s Feminist art - while proposing a new approach to fusing history, research and experimentation in painting. In addition Moyer’s work, influenced by a background in design and queer activism, intricately weaves together concept, research, and lived experience with a range of stylistic and physical references. With their evocative, bodily forms, transparent veils of aqueous color and flat surfaces, Moyer’s paintings forge distinct traces of 20th century art — Surrealism, Color Field painting, Pop and 1970s Feminist art — into a contemporary vision uniquely her own. The subject of recent museum exhibitions, Moyer is recognized as one of the most distinctive, powerful, and thoughtful painters of her generation.
Moyer’s work has been exhibited widely in both the United States and Europe. Moyer was recently included in the exhibitions One Night Only in Dallas, TX (2019), Queer Abstraction at Des Moines Art Center, IA (2019), and Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times at the Portland Museum of Art, ME (2020). Her paintings were recently featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial Exhibition. DC Moore Gallery has presented two solo exhibitions of Moyer’s work Pagan's Rapture (2018) and Sirens (2016). Previous museum shows including, Carrie Moyer: Pirate Jenny, that originated at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY and traveled to SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA, and the Columbus College of Art and Design, OH (2013); and Interstellar, at the Worcester Art Museum, MA (2012). Group exhibitions include, Three Graces: Polly Apfelbaum, Tony Feher, and Carrie Moyer, at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; and Agitpop!, at the Brooklyn Museum, NY, all in 2015.
Moyer earned a BFA from Pratt Institute (1985), an MA in Computer Graphics from New York Institute of Technology (1990) and an MFA from Bard College (2000). She is a Professor in the Art and Art History Department and Director of the Graduate Program at Hunter College and Vice Chair of the Board of Governors at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.” - DC MOORE
