Selections from Summer Wheat: Blood, Sweat, and Tears Catalog by shulamitnazarian

Summer Wheat Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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Sean O'Harrow Foreword Erin Dziedzic At the Forefront Women and Representation in Summer Wheat’s Blood, Sweat, and Tears

David Pagel Behind the Screen

Anna Stothart WE RUN THINGS

Yael Friedman Eternal Tales Owen

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From Labor to Rest: Summer Wheat’s Midnight Snack Nina Bozicnik Feminist Vitality and Wiggling Bodies in Summer Wheat: Blood, Sweat, and Tears Plates About the Artist

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David Pagel

Behind the Screen

It’s impossible to mistake a painting made by Summer Wheat for a painting made by anyone else. The usual reasons account for that: palette, subject matter, and composition. Never shaded or blended with other colors, Wheat’s colors come in solid chunks, which she seems to have plucked from all parts of the rainbow and then manipulated just so, mixing her pigments so that their tints and tones are organic, autumnal, and earthy. The majority recall crops on the cusp of being harvested, mountain lakes rich with minerals, and breathtaking coral reefs, through which swim equally unbelievable fish. Black and white also play major roles, evoking the vastness of star-spangled night skies while giving Wheat’s works the visual wallop of graphic novels and the primal grittiness of cave paintings. As for subject matter, Wheat focuses on what she knows: women working, both individually and cooperatively. Whether hunting and gathering or farming or fishing or feeding their families, the women in Wheat’s pictures are busy doing the things that make civilization possible. Compositionally, Wheat’s paintings locate viewers in the thick of things. Nearly all of her works have the presence of close-ups, of tightly cropped details of action-packed scenes or vast panoramas that draw you in for a close look. And that’s when you discover what truly sets Wheat’s paintings apart from other paintings, both contemporary

and historical. The surfaces of her works are made up of thousands upon thousands of individual strands of paint. Each protrudes forward. Many droop downward, tugged by gravity. Sometimes Wheat’s worms of paint meld with their neighbors, as if melting. At other times they lie side by side, like sleeping creatures, snuggling for warmth and protection. At still other times the strands get all tangled up, like hair in need of a good brushing. In every instance, what had seemed to be a smooth, uniform plane of color turns out to be a densely—and infinitely complex—network of innumerable nooks and crannies. The surfaces of Wheat’s works are a granular reality made up of worlds within worlds—and then some. In a few square inches, an endless range of forms and relationships opens up. Blades of grass come to mind, as do crocheted sweaters, beds of moss, and cilia—the eyelash-like protuberances found on cells and microorganisms. And when seen out of the corner of your eye, Wheat’s sculpted strands of paint seem to be animated, like 3D cartoons, squirming through the earth, like worms, or undulating in ocean currents, like seaweed forests, or blowing in the wind, like fields of grass. The details of her surfaces sharpen perception, alerting you to the beauty of realities overlooked when you move too fast, as often happens when swiping screens.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Page 14, Figure 7. Summer Wheat’s studio, 2019, Brookyn, New York. Courtesy of the artist. Page 17, Figure 8. Summer Wheat’s assistants working in her studio, 2019, Brookyn, New York. Courtesy of the artist.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Wheat’s paintings also begin with screens. Neither high-tech nor illuminated, they are the same mass produced screens found in window and door frames across America, simple but ingenious inventions that allow fresh air into homes while keeping out insects. Wheat uses such screens as other painters use canvas. But she does not apply paint to the fronts of her works; she pushes it through from behind, using trowels and palette knives to smush pasty globs of hand-mixed pigments through the mesh. Working from the backside has all sorts of implications, both literal and metaphoric, physical and poetic.

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First, it requires a certain type of process. Wheat’s paintings leave no room for mistakes. Once the paint gets pushed through the screen, adjustments or corrections cannot be made. So she starts with drawings, working out her compositions and palettes, and then works with a crew of studio assistants to make each one-shot work in one fell swoop. Second, making a painting from its backside

pays homage to the behind-the-scenes work women have done throughout history—and continue to do today—both the unglamorous, everyday labors of homemaking and childrearing and the out-of-the-spotlight jobs typically prescribed by society. Third, making paintings from behind flips the narrative about the artist’s “touch,” a sign throughout history of artistic—often male—genius. Wheat’s fingerprints are nowhere to be found on her hands-off paintings. In a sense, she works blind, letting the paint do its thing and leaving viewers free to see with fresh eyes. Her works are originals: startling versions of age-old endeavors that invite us to envision things differently, not just in terms of how images look, feel, and mean but also in terms of the ways we interact with our surroundings.•

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Owen

From Labor to Rest: Summer Wheat’s Midnight Snac

“The art world’s emphasis on individualism,” explains New Museum union member and Senior Editor Dana Kopel, underscores “the difficulties of building solidarity among art workers.” But we should not be discouraged, Kopel counsels, because “this [solidarity] had been possible—so it could be possible again.”1 On January 24, 2019, in an effort to improve their working conditions, New Museum employees voted overwhelmingly to unionize. The ideal at stake, for which many art institutions’ workers have advocated, is that a museum career should not merely be “a job for rich people,” as one anonymous New Museum employee remarked.2 In recent years, labor movements have reacquired traction within the privatized landscape of American art museums. Art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson crucially reminds us that “labor history is incomplete without women’s contributions.”3 Summer Wheat’s exhibition, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, points toward a critical, correlated fact: Art is labor, long shouldered by women. Wheat’s work prioritizes anonymous forms of labor, many of which are domestic and historically assigned to women. Consider, for instance, the artist’s 2015 exhibition at Fridman Gallery, where Wheat debuted her paradigmatic fiber-paintings, which are created using the wholly novel technique of pressing paint through a mesh screen. Walk-in Pantry materialized a para-fictional account that expands

the enigmatic life of Johannes Vermeer’s iconic milkmaid. The exhibition permitted viewers entry to a world imagined for the milkmaid: Powdery, charcoal-covered paintings pictured the laborer’s various domestic accoutrements. Wheat’s paintings reveal a larder fully stocked with fish, cooking oil, and utensils. In Swept Under the Rug (2015), Wheat’s first pressed painting, she produced a six-paneled dumpling recipe that rested on a bed of charcoal: “dirt” of the milkmaid’s own. Conceptually, the exhibition energized this domestic worker’s anonymous life and labor, creating a new narrative filled with victuals, secrets, and vitality. Works in Blood, Sweat, and Tears not only advance the artist’s ongoing recognition of women’s labor but envision moments of respite from work. In Midnight Snack (2019; p.53), Wheat tempts viewers with another pantry to raid. Three vibrant, willowy figures populate a salmon-colored world filled with forking branches. Toward the right of the painting’s composition, we witness an anonymous figure, seated, as she tends to the making of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—the eponymous “midnight snack.” In the distance, a woman stoops as if to collect scattered legumes, and the left of the composition is dominated by another figure’s legs. With feet strapped into chunky platforms, toes peek out from teal socks, and a hand clenches a single, oversized peanut. Through careful cropping, Wheat circumvents revealing the faces of her

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subjects: They could be any woman and every woman. Midnight Snack complements the exhibition’s theme of blood, sweat, and tears by depicting a hard-earned moment of rest. Indeed, rest emerges as a curious subject, especially considering that the composition references Gustave Courbet’s epochal Stonebreakers (1848; fig.12). A career-defining painting in Courbet’s oeuvre, the artist executed it in post-Revolution France and stirred controversy through his deadpan depiction of two wretched laborers absorbed in an intensely physical task, shunning spectators for back-breaking work. The idea for this painting famously arrived to Courbet on a carriage ride in the country: I had taken our carriage and was driving on the way to the Chateau at Saint-Denis to paint a landscape; near Maisieres, I stopped to consider two men breaking stones on the highway. It’s rare to meet the most complete expression of poverty, so an idea for a painting came to me on the spot. I made an appointment with them at my studio for the next day.4 From the comfort of his caravan, Courbet, the son of landowners, romanticized peasant life but also sought to epitomize the harsh realities of manual exertion and poverty, creating an image that might resonate with a popular, Revolution-era audience. Wheat’s hunched figures quote Courbet’s, absorbed in their work (or rest) and avoiding acknowledgment of the painting’s beholder. Wheat substitutes Courbet’s gritty realism for effusive, colorful, and otherworldly gestures, and she does not fetishize her subject’s labor. Rather, Midnight Snack memorializes the break, that rare, fleeting, and quiet moment when we can reward ourselves outside of work.•

Dana Kopel, quoted in Alex Greenburger, “‘Art Workers Don’t Kiss Ass’: Looking Back on the Formation of MoMA’s Pioneering Union in the 1970s,” in ARTnews (October 16, 2019). http://www. artnews.com/2019/10/16/moma-pasta-union-impact/.

Anonymous New Museum employee, quoted in Rachel Corbett and Julia Halperin, “In a Landslide Decision, Employees at the New Museum Vote to Unionize,” in artnet news (January 24, 2019). https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-museum-unionvote-1447288.

Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), 127.

Gustave Courbet, quoted in Jack Lindsay, Gustave Courbet: His Life and Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 59.

Figure 12. Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, oil on canvas, 65 x 101¹⁄₄ inches. Inv. Gal. NR. 1522 (missing since 1945). Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany. Page 28, Figure 13. Summer Wheat, Grooming Hair, 2019, acrylic on aluminum mesh, 68 x 94 inches. Courtesy of Summer Wheat.

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Beekeepers 2019 acrylic on aluminum mesh 68 x 235 inches

Courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles

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Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Summer Wheat

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Summer Wheat Born 1977, Oklahoma City, OK Lives and works in New York, NY Education 2005 MFA, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA 2000 BA, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK

Solo Exhibitions 2020 Foragers, Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC Solo Exhibition, SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO Solo Exhibition, Zidoun-Bossuyt, Luxembourg 2019 Heavy Lifting, KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY Royal Jelly, Dirimart Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey 2018 Catch and Release, Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA Gamekeepers, Andrew Edlin gallery, New York, NY Inside the Garden, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY 2017 Noble Metal, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel Full Circle, Henry Art Museum, Seattle, WA Noble Metal, Savannah College of Art and Design, Trois Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2016 Pry the Lid Off, Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City, OK 2015 Walk-in Pantry, Fridman Gallery, New York, NY

Group Exhibitions 2020 Yarrow Pickers, curated by Brian Rochefort, Harper’s Apartment, New York, NY 2019 Summer Wheat and Hirosuke Yabe, Wasserman Projects, Detroit, MI The Procession, Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles at VACATION, New York, NY America Will Be! Surveying the Contemporary Landscape, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Magnetic Fields, curated by Cecilia Alemani, Gió Marconi, Milan, Italy 2018 Summer of Love, Freight+Volume, New York, NY SEED, curated by Yvonne Force, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY SuperSet, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA Textile Abstraction, curated by Jens Hoffmann, Casas Riegner, Bogota, Colombia 2017 The Secret Life of Plants, Freight+Volume, New York, NY

2016 2015 2014 2013

2012

2011 2010

As Worlds Colliding, curated by Ceren Erdem, Dirimart Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey Dasha Shiskin, Jillian Mayer, Summer Wheat, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York,NY Hard, University Hall Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA We Run Things, Y gallery, New York, NY Common Thread, Mixed Greens, New York, NY More Material, curated by Duro Olowu, Salon 94, New York, NY Pouring it on, Hester Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA Expanding the Field of Painting, ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA Mira Dancy, Jessica Williams, Summer Wheat, Thierry Goldberg gallery, New York, NY PAINT THINGS: Beyond the Stretcher, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA Paradox Maintenance Technicians: A comprehensive technical manual to contemporary painting from Los Angeles and beyond, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA Upsodown, New Art Center, Newton, MA Color Go Lightly, Gallery Valentine, Hamptons, NY Boston Contemporary, Four Eleven Studio, Provincetown, MA Twisted Sisters, DODGEgallery, New York, NY Pretty Ugly, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA The Calendar’s Tales, 808 Gallery, Boston University, Boston, MA What Only Paint Can Do, Triangle Arts Association, Brooklyn, NY i am who i am. The Portrait Reconsidered, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA Romantic Agony, Horton Gallery, New York, NY Under the Radar, Front Street Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Awards and Residencies 2019 Northern Trust Prize Purchase, awarded by the Speed Art Museum at Expo Chicago 2016 Artadia NADA award, curated by Ian Alteveer and Amanda Hunt 2010 Triangle Arts Association International Residency Program, awarded one-year term studio residency, Brooklyn, NY

Select Public Collections Pérez Art Museum Miami Dallas Museum of Art de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

Bibliography 2019 Moore, Anne Elizabeth. “Critics’ Picks: Summer Wheat and Hirosuke Yabe,” Artforum (November 6). Sharp, Sarah Rose. “Two Artists Merge Their Divergent Worlds Into a Veritable Wonderland,” Hyperallergic (November 4). 2018 Li Jennifer. “Summer Wheat,” Art in America (November 1). Nimptsch, Emily. “Summer Wheat: Catch and Release,” Riot Material (October 15). de Dobay Rifelj, Claire. “Summer Wheat at Shulamit Nazarian,” Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (October 3). “Featured Artist Summer Wheat,” LA Review of Books (October 2). Gittlen, Ariela. “New Establishment,” Elephant, Issue 36 (autumn). Castro, Jan Garden. “Empowered Women,” re:sculpt, International Sculpture Center Blog (August 1). Einspruch, Franklin. “Seed: Paul Kasmin Gallery,” Delicious Line (July 9). Jones, Alex A. “Summer Wheat: Swamp Hunters,” The Brooklyn Rail (July 11). Scott Indrisek. “17 Artists Share the Music That Inspires Them,” Artsy (June 27). Rina, Amelia. “Critic’s Picks: Summer Wheat at Andrew Edlin Gallery,” Artforum (May 20). Ray, Sharmistha. “Everything you missed from New York’s edition of the Frieze Art Fair,” Elle India (May 6). Sutton, Benjamin. “The Good, the Bad, and the Forgettable at Frieze New York,” Hyperallergic (May 3). Miller, H. James. “Private View: our Pick of May gallery shows,” The Art Newspaper (April 30). Kukielski, Tina. “Summer Wheat,” Bomb Magazine (April 9). “Hard: Subversive Representation at UMass Boston”, AEQAI (February 19). 2017 Berg, Allison. “5 NY-Based Artists to Watch,” Gotham (December 13). “10 Artists to Watch at Frieze London, 1:54, and Sunday,” Artsy (October 6). “Summer Wheat’s ‘Noble Metal’ at Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv,” Blouin Art Info (October 14). Muñoz-Alonso, Lorena, “5 Exciting Young Artists to Watch at Sunday Art Fair,” artnet news (October 6). Granberry Michael, “DMA acquires works from 6 artists in Dallas Art Fair as part of $100,000 program,” Dallas News (April 6). 2016 Miller, M.H., “Summer Wheat Wins 2016 NADA award,” Art News (May 16). 2015 Goodrich, John. “The Painted Pantry of Vermeer’s Milkmaid,” Hyperallergic (April 20). Duffy, Owen. “Summer Wheat: Walk-in Pantry,” ARTPULSE Magazine 23. Wilkin, Karen. “All the Galleries,” The Hudson Review (summer). Larkin, Daniel. “A Black-and-White Gallery Tour of Chelsea,” Hyperallergic (April 2).

2014

Smith, Roberta. “Clash of the Items, at a Gallery Near You,” The New York Times (July 24). Knudsen, Stephen. “Deferall of a Vanguard,” ARTPULSE Magazine 5, no. 19 (May): 50–54. Indrisek, Scott. “NADA offers Relief from Frieze’s Market Madness,” Blouin Art Info (May 5). Vartanian, Hrag. “NADA NY Does it Better Than Ever,” Hyperallergic (May 10). Johnson, Ken. “Pluralism, with Bug Zappers and Doll People: A Critics Guide to the Best of the Lower East Side,” The New York Times (April 3). 2013 Gleisner, Jacquelyn. “Summer Wheat and Her Flight Away From ‘Cowboy Space Gangsters’,” Art:21 Blog (April 8). Bergeron, Chris. “Upsodown Captures the Magic of Carnival,” MetroWest Daily News (January 27). McQuaid, Cate. “Whats up Boston? Upsodown,” Boston Globe (January 22). Davis, Lindsey. “Upsodown at New Art Center,” Art Scope (January 28). McQuaid, Cate. “They are Off the Wall,” Boston Globe (February 8). Pyper, John. “Paint Things at deCordova,” Big, Red, and Shiny (January 31). “PAINT THINGS: Beyond the Stretcher,” Sculpture Magazine 32 (March). 2012 Baldwin, Rosecrans. “North American Scum,” The Morning News (February 28). McQuaid, Cate. “At the Edge of Expectation,” Boston Globe (February 22). 2011 McQuaid, Cate. “Monstrously Provocative Portraits,” Boston Globe (February 9). Garza, Evan. “11 to Watch in 2011: Editor’s Pick,” New American Paintings Blog 2009 Holz, Evanice. “Eye See Hue,” no. 3 (December 9). Vartanian, Hrag. “Summer Wheat: ‘My First Rap Song,’” Hyperallergic (July 20). 2007 Hersh, Allison. “Go Beyond the Studio Door,” Savannah Morning News (May 30). 2005 Miller, Ken. “King of Zine,” Tokion49 (Sept/Oct): 55–56 Morris, Amy. “Emerging Artists 6,” Coastal Art and Antiques (January): 19. Morekis, Jim. “Painting the Town Red,” Connect Savannah (January 13): 5. Hersh, Allison. “Fairy Tale Fever,” Savannah Morning News (July 2): 5. Bennet, Allison. “Art Picks,” Savannah Morning News (June 30). 2004 O.M., “Une Exposition Collective A Decuver Jusquá Cecoir,” La Provence, Lacoste, France (March). Boss, Monique. “Wheat Re-imagines Office Supplies,” The Chronicle 5, no. 15 (December). 2001 Brandenburg, John. “Media Exhibit Captures Artistic Detail,” The Daily Oklahoman (April 22). Hinton, Mick. “Making Walls Flower,” The Daily Oklahoman (July 5).

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Summer Wheat

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About the Authors Nina Bozicnik is an associate curator at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Her most recent exhibitions include Carrie Yamaoka: recto/verso (2019), Martha Friedman: Castoffs (2018), and Between Bodies (2018), which featured the work of eight artists exploring the entangled relationships and porous boundaries between human and more-than-human bodies. She organized the exhibition Summer Wheat: Full Circle in 2017. Prior to the Henry, she held curatorial positions at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; deCordova Sculpture Park + Museum, Lincoln, MA; and the Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA. Owen Duffy is an art historian, writer, and curator based in New York. He has published in ArtReview, art&education, CURA, Momus, ARTPULSE, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies, and has presented his research at such institutions as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; LASANAA Live Art Hub, Kathmandu; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and the Fabrica Santo Thyrso, Portugal. He has been a Visiting Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design and received his PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University where he completed a dissertation titled “The Politics of Immateriality and ‘The Dematerialization of Art.’” Erin Dziedzic is director of curatorial affairs at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. She originated the commission Atrium Project and curated new presentations of works by Jose Lerma, Firelei Báez, Paul Henry Ramirez, and Angel Otero. Recent curated exhibitions include Hew Locke: Here’s the Thing, Angela Dufresne: Making a Scene, Adam Cvijanovic: American Montage, Xaviera Simmons: Number 16, Siah Armajani: Bridge Builder, Rashid Johnson: Hail We Now Sing Joy, and Worlds Otherwise Hidden with artists Nari Ward, Kimsooja, and Nevin Aladağ; she co-curated Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. She

has contributed to publications of Savannah College of Art and Design, Kemper Museum, Island Press, Duke University Press’s Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition; she was guest editor for ARTPAPERS (May/ June 2013). Yael Friedman writes extensively about art and culture, as well as urban history and the built environment. She is a regular contributor to The Economist and has also been published in The Daily Beast, Artinfo, The Conversationalist, Urban Omnibus, CityLab, and other media outlets. She loves collaborating with artists and curators to help realize their work or create new and evolving projects. She is based in New York City. David Pagel is an art critic who writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times. He is a professor of art theory and criticism at Claremont Graduate University and an adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, where he is organizing Telling Stories: Changing the Narrative, an eight-artist exhibition about the structure and impact of storytelling in contemporary art forthcoming in 2020. Recent book-length publications include Jim Shaw (Lund Humphries, 2019) and Talking Beauty: A Conversation Between Joseph Raffael and David Pagel about Art, Love, Death, and Creativity (Zero+, 2018). Anna Stothart is the curatorial director at Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul. She was previously the Brown Foundation curator of modern and contemporary art at the San Antonio Museum of Art and assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. She organized solo exhibitions of Mickalene Thomas, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Adriana Varejão, and Meleko Mokgosi. She also acted as presenting curator for numerous exhibitions including Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Ragnar Kjartansson: Song, LaToya Ruby Frazier: WITNESS, and Jim Hodges: GIVE MORE THAN YOU TAKE. She received her master’s in art history and museum studies from Tufts University with an emphasis in contemporary Latin American art.

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