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.
Merrily Kerr is an art critic and writer based in New York. For more than 20 years, Merrily has published in international art magazines including Time Out New York, Art on Paper, Flash Art, Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, and Tema Celeste in addition to writing catalogue essays and guest lecturing. Merrily teaches art appreciation at Marymount Manhattan College and has taught for Cooper Union Continuing Education.
For more than a decade Merrily has crafted personalized tours of cultural discovery in New York's galleries and museums for individuals and groups, including corporate tours, collectors, artists, advertising agencies, and student groups from Texas Woman's University, Parsons School of Design, Chicago's Moody Institute, Cooper Union Continuing Education, Hunter College Continuing Education and other institutions. Merrily's tours have been featured in The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Sydney Morning Herald and Philadelphia Magazine.
Merrily is licensed by New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs as a tour guide and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA USA)
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