Press
"Cheri Wheat's Symphony"
- Lauren Amalia Redding -Curator, Argentium.
Magus
When Wheat depicts profiles, they are angular, punctuated. They act like the edge of a cliff. Her line work is sinuous yet staccato, so very sensual, yet unerring in dominance. Whether wrapping around nostrils or fingers, Wheat’s lines record frenetic, instantaneous energy with verve, yet profess fierce love of cliffs and fortitude in their function and necessity within that space. It takes such prolific draughtsmanship to convey so much with so little information, and Wheat conveys metered breath and kinetic limbs with a single stroke. The lines unravel like the peal of a timpani, a mighty strike of a mighty drum. Yet there are shadows. They are velvety but rugged, premeditated but muscular, gratifying and soft yet with infallible purpose. Their planes act as the dawn or dusk between day and night, glowing through their dissipating edges, quickness despite their indication of the subject’s tangibility. The shadows are, at times, effused with penetrating light, its temperature replete with warmth or pearlescent cool.
Phantasmal, yet emotive—like wisps of smoke with delineated edges—yet that’s too superficial. Cheri Wheat balances staggering knowledge and surety in her hand with ephemeral passages, fleeting swatches of blushing fog, and swelling impressions of line and mark. Her work crescendos and decrescendos, like strains of music that coagulate into clarion notes, simultaneously muted and opulent like a great Romantic symphony. But did those notes linger over Degas’ rainy Parisian streets? Or herald a procession in ancient Rome? Do they ring from a Medici Court in Florence? Do they sound the primordial entrance of womanhood, or do they mourn the loss of girlish innocence?
This interplay of light and shadow are a horn in the distance, sounding from the opposite end of Montmartre or Via Sacra or the Boboli, its keen tone sometimes subdued by Wheat’s mastery of atmospheric perspective. The horn may, at times, be flush and heady, but it is never tremulous. The timpanis and brass sound the score of Wheat’s subjects. There is no singular portrait: rather, they are celebrations of the feminine, but not in a stereotypical sense. Wheat’s subjects are the manifestations of female consciousness, but as if embedded in mythology and sainthood. There are moments amongst Minerva, Joan of Arc, and their nebulous counterparts. Their effervescent bodies read like bas-reliefs in the Forum, yet their expressions and awareness are of Ophelia.
Such dichotomies are achieved because of Wheat’s ingenuity and acute intelligence, which renders her subjects exquisitely and fearlessly. Indeed, Wheat’s technical absence of fear is manifested in her subjects’ lack of fear, whether in sleeping eyelids or bared wrists. These subjects are timeless and unapologetic—and yet, for all their enigma, there is a brightness and wildness paired with pathos and pulse. Halcyon, yet decisive—like overtures of both ardor and vigor—yet that, also, is too superficial.Wheat’s work melds myriad dichotomies that blur the line between our perceived world and the ethers of our dreams—or the ethers of history? Her subjects exist just beyond our grasp into either the unconscious or into memory, unabashed figures of strength, solitude, and sensuality. In this portrayal of the female, Wheat marries lore with line, and so mirrors the impulse and beauty in us all.
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