SEPTEMBER 16 – NOVEMBER 6, 2020

SOCO Gallery is thrilled to present an exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Summer Wheat. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.  Entitled Lather, Rinse, Repeat,  the exhibition features five large scale paintings and two ‘pebble seats’ focusing on the theme of bathing and grooming.

The theme, drawn on throughout art history, from Mary Cassatt to Paul Cézanne, frequently depicts idyllic figures and scenery. In Wheat’s work, however, the women portrayed are imperfect and defy traditional notions of beauty. The key image in the exhibition, Showers, 2020, illustrates a unique “washing machine” of women and water. A stream of water flows from one woman to another creating a cyclical and metaphorical machine. Each woman is a gear that operates on her own but is also part of the larger whole.  

Water is associated with the origins of life, as well as renewal and transformation. The women are tied together in their domestic sphere but also in this ritualistic cleansing, supporting each other and supporting new life. Wheat’s female figures delight in their interaction with water as they embrace its versatile nature. They use their physical bodies not only as receptacles to connect their shared experiences, but also to assert their agency as women.

Wheat began creating the sketches for these paintings months before the world-wide pandemic of COVID-19 erupted. Ironically, the exhibition will open and these artworks will be shown at a time where cleanliness and personal hygiene will have a deeper significance. The pebble seats in the exhibition provide a place for rest, reflection, and contemplation. Created with mosaic stones, cut to convey details from the paintings, the organic-shaped seats give viewers an opportunity to physically connect to the symbols depicted in the paintings. 

The artist is an innovator, constantly working to blur boundaries of traditional art forms and mediums. She pushes acrylic paint through fine wire mesh to create large scale paintings that could also be called part sculpture and part textile. Wheat combines rich traditions from Egyptian relief sculptures, 18th and 19th century etching, French Post Impressionism and Modernist painting, Pop Art, Native American traditions of art production and Medieval tapestries hung as symbols of authority. 

This exhibition will coincide with a large-scale installation by the artist in the atrium at the Mint Museum Uptown, entitled Foragers. The monumental “stained glass” window, spanning four-stories and 96 windows, is part of the museum’s newest exhibition In Vivid Color.

Summer Wheat (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, B. 1977)

Summer Wheat (b. 1977, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) received a BA from the University of Central Oklahoma and an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. Recent solo exhibitions include the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2020); KMAC Museum, Louisville (2019); Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles (2018); Smack Mellon, New York (2018); Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle (2017); and Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City (2016). Additional museum exhibitions include Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013–14); deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (2013); and Torrance Art Museum (2013). Wheat received the 2016 New York NADA Artadia Award and the 2019 Northern Trust Purchase Prize at EXPO Chicago. 

Wheat’s work is in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Peréz Art Museum Miami; The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Blood, Sweat, and Tears, the artist’s largest solo museum exhibition to date, was on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City through May 24, 2020. Wheat will have a solo exhibition with Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles in 2021.