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Inka Essenhigh

Inka Essenhigh

  • About
  • Biography
  • News
  • Books
  • Gallery Exhibitions
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  • About
    View works. Inka Essenhigh, Blue Field, 2021
    Blue Field, 2021
    View works

    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.

    Download CV (PDF, opens in a new tab.)
    View artist website
  • Selected Works

    Inka Essenhigh, Roses, 2025 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Ghost Pipes, 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, AI City, 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Forrest Light, 2024 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Blue Field, 2021 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Red Flower in Late Summer, 2021 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Daphne and Apollo, 2013 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Green Goddess II, 2010 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Spring Bar Scene, 2007-2008 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Spring, 2007 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Shopping, 2005 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Arrows of Fear, 2002 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Pegasus, 2001 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Inka Essenhigh, Roses, 2025
  • Biography
    View works. Inka Essenhigh, Blue Field, 2021
    Blue Field, 2021
    View works

    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.

    Download CV (PDF, opens in a new tab.)
  • News
    • George Saunders’ essay for Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse features in The Paris Review

      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

      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

      Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine – featuring a work by Inka Essenhigh

      March 31, 2022
      Inka Essenhigh’s painting Estuary , 2022, is available in the online fundraising sale Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine , now live on...
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    • Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line tours to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

      Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line tours to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

      September 15, 2018
      This 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...
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    • Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line at Virginia MOCA

      Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line at Virginia MOCA

      March 17, 2018
      A 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...
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    • Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts

      Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts

      27 May - 9 October, 2016
      27 May - 9 October 2016. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, presents Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds Inka Essenhigh’s paintings and prints evoke...
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  • Books
    • Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse

      Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse

      George Saunders, 2025
      Folio, containing 12 page text and 9 loose-leaf image plates
      Publisher: Victoria Miro
      ISBN: 978-1-914506-16-1
      Dimensions: 34 x 25 cm
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  • Gallery Exhibitions
    • Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse

      Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse

      14 Mar – 17 Apr 2025 London Gallery II
      The 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

      Inka Essenhigh

      6 Nov – 11 Dec 2021 Venice
      Essenhigh’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

      Inka Essenhigh

      3 Apr – 2 May 2008 London Gallery I
      This 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...
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    • Inka Essenhigh

      Inka Essenhigh

      27 Apr – 28 May 2005 London Gallery I
      Victoria 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...
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    • Inka Essenhigh

      Inka Essenhigh

      29 Oct – 7 Dec 2002 London Gallery I
      Inka 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...
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    • Inka Essenhigh

      15 Mar – 28 Apr 2000 Victoria Miro Cork Street
      In 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...
  • Contact Form

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