Tag: inka essenhigh

Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery

Chic-looking hybrid people/flowers greet visitors to Inka Essenhigh’s show at Miles McEnery Gallery, part of a painting featuring an outdoor rave attended by fabulous flora.  In other works, leaves cluster together to become figures and tree trunks turn into bell-bottom wearing legs, a charming anthropomorphizing of the natural world.  Associated with Disney as much as Dali, Essenhigh’s fantastical vision taps into a desire to connect with nature while also exploring possible surreal outcomes of that wish.  (On view through June 3rd).

Inka Essenhigh, Flower King, enamel on canvas, 76 x 62 inches, 2022.

Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery

Inspired by a multitude of sources from Dali to Disney, Inka Essenhigh continues to craft fantastical scenarios as intriguing as they are bizarre.  Here, a curvy female figure (seemingly crafted from a single orange/green material from her hair to her off-kilter shoes) primps in front of a shattered mirror that reflects a monster-like apparition.  Are we seeing reality?  Will she continue to transform before our eyes?  Essenhigh’s rich stories leave us wanting more.  (On view at Miles McEnery Gallery on 22nd Street in Chelsea through Nov 14th).

Inka Essenhigh, Forever Young, enamel on canvas, 60 x 42 inches, 2020.

Inka Essenhigh at Miles McEnery Gallery

A Christmas cactus tangos with a dramatically dark black tulip in the foreground of Inka Essenhigh’s ‘Party of the Flames and Flowers,’ a standout painting in the artist’s solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery in Chelsea.  Personified flowers compete to show off their beauty in an intriguing venue that mysteriously appears to be undersea. (On view through May 25th).

Inka Essenhigh, Party of the Flames and Flowers, enamel on canvas, 48 x 55 inches, 2017.

Inka Essenhigh in ‘Sargent’s Daughters’ at Sargent’s Daughters

It’s hard to tell if this enchanted scene is aided or threatened by the dark-faced spirit behind a frolicking young woman and two sprites. Titled ‘The 1%,’ this painting by New Yorker Inka Essenhigh suggests that their bliss is tenuous. (At Sargent’s Daughters through July 26th).

Inka Essenhigh, The 1 %, oil on canvas, 30 x 12 inches 2014.