Launching tomorrow, the artist’s solo show in Dubai is a captivating immersion into an otherworldly realm of endless possibilities that challenge the status quo
Entitled Golden Thread, Summer Wheat’s very first exhibition at Zidoun-Bossuyt Dubai Gallery features a series of new works that traverse themes of vanity, visibility and love.
The American contemporary artist is best known for her vibrant paintings, multifaceted sculptures, and immersive installations that tie together the history of materiality, figuration, and abstraction in both fine art and craft milieus. Her densely populated ‘scapes’ envision worlds where time stands still and every single person, regardless of social status, lives in a shared, equal space, in which both labour and leisure are paths to healing humanity.
Summer Wheat. Buried Treasure. 2022. Acrylic paint and gouache on aluminium mesh. 172.7×358.1cm
Using humour inspired by comic strips, Summer subverts conventional hierarchical structures and stereotypes to create more expansive depictions of daily life throughout history. For the artist, labour functions as both a conceptual and formal connective thread that runs throughout her oeuvre. The evocative works depict the visualisation of labour as a tool to expose gender and class inequality.
“Planetary motifs have become a recurring theme throughout my past works,” expresses Summer. “These images are meant to be used as mirrors that reflect interior states of being. In these paintings, I consider the relationship between the cosmic realm and human existence by bringing celestial bodies—the sun, moon, and stars—and earthly creatures into a shared pictorial field. Fragmentary and contorted, adorned and decorated, my figural forms and characters evoke the psychological toll and messiness of the mundane experience and search for meaning, and also the beauty and resilience implicit in this process.”
Summer Wheat. Jewel Garden, Left. 2022. Acrylic paint and gouache on aluminium mesh. 172.7×238.8cm
The artist is influenced by both spiritual and art historical masters, with muses such as de Vinci, Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, and Andy Warhol, and concepts linked to internal, external, and cosmic space, mirroring, and nature.
Her engagement with the emotive nature of colour embraces intuition and felt experience over conventional reason and logic, removing the boundaries between figure and ground, representation and abstraction, portrait and landscape, and fine art and craft. The result is tactile, vivid work that engages process, form, and narrative equally, creating layered, non-linear compositions that offer alternative narratives of history, mythology, and folklore. The contained worlds of female figures enact a realm beyond themselves, and signal the artist’s broader universe.
Golden Thread by Summer Wheat is on view from 4 March until 29 April 2023 at Zidoun-Bossuyt Dubai.
Lead image: Summer Wheat. Claws. 2022. Acrylic paint and gouache on aluminium mesh. 172.7×238.8cm. All images courtesy of the artist and Zidoun-Bossuyt Dubai.
