
Friends
2019
Friends is a luminous small-scale work in pigment on wood, completed by Summer Wheat in 2019 and measuring just over thirty by forty-two centimeters. Wheat's distinctive approach to painting centers on the physical negotiation between medium and surface, and this piece demonstrates her ability to coax rich, layered color and tactile presence from a deceptively modest format. The wood support lends the work a quiet materiality that canvas cannot replicate, allowing the pigment to settle and accumulate in ways that reward close looking. The result is an intimate object that feels simultaneously ancient and immediate, possessing the kind of concentrated energy that defines Wheat's most compelling output. Wheat has built a significant reputation through large-scale mesh paintings that blur the boundary between painting, weaving, and printmaking, and Friends carries that same conceptual attentiveness into a more condensed form. Works on wood at this scale represent a particular kind of distillation in her practice, where the artist's decisions become more exposed and the relationship between gesture and ground is laid bare. Signed by the artist, the work arrives with a directness and intimacy that larger institutional pieces inevitably sacrifice. Offered through the Food Bank For New York City Benefit Auction, Friends presents a genuine opportunity to acquire a signed Wheat at an accessible scale. The piece is unframed, giving future owners the latitude to present it according to their own spatial and aesthetic sensibility, and its compact dimensions make it a versatile addition to a thoughtful collection.
- Medium
- Pigment on Wood
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
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