INKA ESSENHIGH | 27 April - 3 June 2023 | Miles McEnery Gallery

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New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, ‘Inka Essenhigh,’ 27 April - 3 June 2023
Image: Christopher Burke Studio. Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY
"Making the world a more delightful and beautiful place with her art, Inka Essenhigh paints dreamlike worlds and childlike fantasies on canvas...Masterfully rendered and fluidly composed, the artist’s joyful canvases take the abundant bounty of nature to exceedingly playful and picturesque heights."

- Paul Laster in "8 Must-See Gallery Shows Around the U.S. This May"
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INKA ESSENHIGH

Blue Mountain, 2022

Enamel on canvas

32 x 28 inches

81.3 x 71.1 cm
“Liberated from the exigencies of everyday life, Essenhigh’s animate and assertively beautiful paintings awaken the senses to the more-than-human world.”

- Suzette McAvoy in "Inka Essenhigh: The Madness of Splendor"
INKA ESSENHIGH

Blue Sycamore, 2023

Enamel on canvas

68 x 54 inches

172.7 x 137.2 cm
"Lauded for her brilliant use of color, Inka Essenhigh creates otherworldly landscape paintings riddled with sprites and supernatural archetypes. While many of her earlier works contain references to graphic novels and animation, some of her latest pieces...draw on botanical themes to create oneiric compositions that blur the boundaries between figuration and abstraction.

Essenhigh is, at times, associated with contemporary figurative painting. Yet her ethereal imagery is ultimately nonobjective, a genuine product of her imagination. Referencing this quality of her work, she has said, 'The unknown comes from the painting process, putting brush to canvas. I do have an agenda and a world I want to create. I’m not interested in meaninglessness. But I am looking for the feeling that the images are coming to me.'"

-Salomé Gómez-Upegui in "The New Generation of Transcendental Painters" for Artsy (2023)
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Inka Essenhigh studio, 2022, New York, NY
INKA ESSENHIGH

Earth Candy, 2022

Enamel on canvas

40 x 50 inches

101.6 x 127 cm
INKA ESSENHIGH

Estuary, 2022

Enamel on canvas

32 x 28 inches

81.3 x 71.1 cm

"Sincerity, seen as a virtue by the Romantics, and now fraught with postmodern ambivalence, is, for Essenhigh, ‘a call to action... I believe it is cowardly for me not to be direct and say what’s in my heart.’"

- Suzette McAvoy in "Inka Essenhigh: The Madness of Splendor"
INKA ESSENHIGH
Floral Fireworks, 2022
Enamel on canvas
50 x 40 inches
127 x 101.6 cm
Inka Essenhigh studio, 2022, New York, NY
"'I organize the painting on a design level, a pattern first,' she says, 'then put the atmosphere on top of that.' She rarely makes preparatory drawings. When she does, they serve as 'reminders of what things feel like, not what they look like.'"

- Suzette McAvoy in "Inka Essenhigh: The Madness of Splendor"
INKA ESSENHIGH

Flower King, 2022

Enamel on canvas

76 x 62 inches

193 x 157.5 cm
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Blue Sycamore (detail), 2023, Enamel on canvas, 68 x 54 inches, 172.7 x 137.2 cm
INKA ESSENHIGH

Forest with Dappled Light, 2022

Enamel on canvas

40 x 50 inches

101.6 x 127 cm
INKA ESSENHIGH

Kittens!, 2022

Enamel on canvas

32 x 28 inches

81.3 x 71.1 cm

"Essenhigh has been 'making paintings to be enjoyed, to live with.'"

- Suzette McAvoy in "Inka Essenhigh: The Madness of Splendor"
INKA ESSENHIGH
Rave Scene, 2022
Enamel on canvas
46 x 68 inches
116.8 x 172.2 cm
"Urban references slip into her paintings, often in the form of nighttime revelry in bars, restaurants, and nightclubs. Rave Scene...is a hypnotic New Year's celebration that pulses with psychedelic color. Elegant, intensely hued flower people mingle in the foreground, observing the feverish crowd of pale pink and lavender dancers in the center. A trippy mix of Disney's Fantasia, Joseph Stella's visionary paintings of Coney Island, and Agnes Pelton's transcendental landscapes, Essenhigh's painting is a 'metaphor for a blooming consciousness.'"

- Suzette McAvoy in "Inka Essenhigh: The Madness of Splendor"
"In 2015, after nearly a decade of painting with oils, Essenhigh returned to working with enamels, the medium that launched her career in the late 1990s. Enamel allows her greater precision in line and definition of details and to build up color in multiple thin layers, resulting in flat glossy surfaces that lend a contemporary slickness to her images."

- Suzette McAvoy in "Inka Essenhigh: The Madness of Splendor"
INKA ESSENHIGH

Yellow Breath, 2022

Enamel on canvas

50 x 40 inches

127 x 101.6 cm
Inka Essenhigh in her studio, 2022, New York, NY

Inka Essenhigh (b. 1969, Bellefonte, PA) received her Master of Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH.

Essenhigh has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Victoria Miro Gallery, Venice, Italy; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Frist Center, Nashville, TN; Honolulu Gallery, Zürich, Switzerland; and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO.

The artist has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Carré d’Art - Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY; Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; SMAK: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuelle Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

Her work may be found in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Miami, FL; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

Essenhigh lives and works in New York, NY.
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