Inka Essenhigh
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AboutBlue Field, 2021
Inka Essenhigh’s paintings seduce and disarm in equal measure. Each work is a complete world in itself, impeccably realised, governed by its own logic and in possession of its own narrative. Each has its own ecology and its protagonists. Each radiates its own particular quality of light. We recognise aspects of these works implicitly. Yet, locating Essenhigh’s painting in time and place has always been part of its challenge and its allure.
The artist paints using enamel on canvas, its sheen for her representing freedom from the weight of history. However, precisely in its delicacy, its lack of ‘weight’, there lies an undeniable authority. Like the seventeenth-century still life painters, Essenhigh’s facility confers a kind of factual status on whatever she describes – whether animal, vegetable, or mineral and however removed from reality it might at first appear.
At the same time, her virtuoso line – economical and suggestive, full of whiplashes and arabesques – creates a fluid dance within and between her motifs that seems to accentuate a hidden psychological aspect. How paintings work themselves into our psyche so profoundly that we see the world through them as much as we recognise the world in them is perhaps Essenhigh’s overarching concern. Her paintings on one level stand for a blooming consciousness. They prime the senses, heighten awareness, intoxicate and transport, and in doing so awaken in us the desire to look further, question more. We unfurl before them.
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Selected Works
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BiographyBlue Field, 2021
Born in 1969, Inka Essenhigh lives and works in New York.
Recent solo institutional exhibitions include Other Worlds: Inka Essenhigh, Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA (2019); Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line, MOCA Virginia, Virginia Beach, USA (2018) travelling to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA (2019); Inka Essenhigh: Manhattanhenge, Drawing Centre, New York, USA (2018).
Her work has been exhibited internationally as part of group exhibitions at venues including Karma, Thomaston, Maine, USA (2024); Speed Art Museum, Louisville, USA; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, USA (2023); the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine, USA (2020); USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL, USA (2020); American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, USA (2019); Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy (2018); the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, USA (2016 and 2012); Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, USA (2013); Dayton Art Institute, OH, USA (2011); Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, USA (2011); Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2007); The Royal Academy of Art, London, UK (2006); Domus Artium 2, Salamanca, Spain (2005); São Paulo Biennale, Brazil (2004); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA (2003) and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2003).
Essenhigh’s work is in the collections of major museums including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York, USA; Denver Art Museum; Denver, USA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, USA; Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; Seattle Art Museum, USA; Tate, London, UK; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, USA and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA.
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News
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George Saunders’ essay for Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse features in The Paris Review
March 25, 2025'The value of a master like Inka Essenhigh is, it seems to me, that she can assist us in the virtuous slowing-down of visual perception.'Read More -
Inka Essenhigh is interviewed by Plus Magazine
March 19, 2025'For me, painting needs to feel good—just like nature feels good. I see art as a way to transform how we experience the world.'Read More -
Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine – featuring a work by Inka Essenhigh
March 31, 2022Inka Essenhigh’s painting Estuary , 2022, is available in the online fundraising sale Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine , now live on...Read More -
Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line tours to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
September 15, 2018This survey (15 September 2018–6 January 2019) of some 30 paintings from across the artist's career tours from Virginia MOCA. 'I wanted my work to...Read More -
Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line at Virginia MOCA
March 17, 2018A survey (17 March–19 August 2018) of some 30 paintings from across the artist's career. Through her painting, Inka Essenhigh provides an authentic voice. Since...Read More -
Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts
27 May - 9 October, 201627 May - 9 October 2016. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, presents Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds Inka Essenhigh’s paintings and prints evoke...Read More
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Books
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Gallery Exhibitions
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Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse
14 Mar – 17 Apr 2025 London Gallery IIThe New York-based artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery comprises a body of work completed during the past year, featuring botanical, landscape and figurative motifs poised between an exuberant exterior world and an energetic interior consciousness.Learn More -
Inka Essenhigh
6 Nov – 11 Dec 2021 VeniceEssenhigh’s first exhibition at Victoria Miro Venice will present new paintings from her ongoing series of botanical works in enamel paint, a medium the artist first worked with two decades ago.Learn More -
Inka Essenhigh
3 Apr – 2 May 2008 London Gallery IThis new series of large-scale landscape paintings offers a vivid portrayal of the weather and passing seasons. Some of the paintings on view depict nature as a living thing, as...Learn More -
Inka Essenhigh
27 Apr – 28 May 2005 London Gallery IVictoria Miro Gallery presents new paintings and works on paper by New York-based Inka Essenhigh, all of which advance the artist's highly stylized investigation of narrative, universal experience and everyday...Learn More -
Inka Essenhigh
29 Oct – 7 Dec 2002 London Gallery IInka Essenhigh's large scale paintings create an enigmatic world in which animated action figures are cast alongside mythological characters and the demimonde in roles where time-honoured human concerns such as...Learn More -
Inka Essenhigh
15 Mar – 28 Apr 2000 Victoria Miro Cork StreetIn Essenhigh’s most recent large-scale canvases, action figures are cast alongside the demimonde in roles where time-honoured human concerns such as patriotism, religion, competitiveness and heroism are played out in...
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Contact Form
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