Inka Essenhigh

Miles McEnery Gallery presents its fourth Inka Essenhigh exhibition exploring landscapes, organic forms, and the shifting boundaries between the natural and imagined worlds. Her distinctive visual language transforms everyday environments into otherworldly scenes filled with mystery, movement, and wonder. Through her exploration of floral motifs, fauna, and still lifes, Essenhigh’s paintings teeter on the edge of reality before breaking through into vibrant, dreamlike landscapes.

Essenhigh’s work carries a striking viscerality. This quality stems from her continual inquiry into sensory experiences—asking questions such as, “Is that what rain or mist feels like? Is that what sunspots are like?” In the essay, “Inka Essenhigh: The Power of Creative Confidence,” Carol Kino, in conversation with Essenhigh about her process, explains: “Even if she starts with an initial idea, she really never knows what she’ll end up with until she gets there. And because she’s working with enamel, she doesn’t have to know, because she can keep sanding down and repainting.” Essenhigh shares that “Things just keep emerging and disappearing until I find what I want.”

Inviting viewers into realms where the familiar and the fantastical effortlessly intertwine, Essenhigh’s latest works reaffirm her position as one of contemporary painting’s most visionary and inventive storytellers.

Inka Essenhigh (b. 1969 in Bellefonte, PA) received her Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH. In 2018, a major mid-career retrospective of her work traveled from the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI. The following year, the Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA hosted another significant solo exhibition of her work.

Essenhigh’s work has been the subject of notable solo exhibitions at Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN; Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL; Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Victoria Miro, London, UK; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; and elsewhere.

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, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Carré d’Art - Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; MoMA PS1, Queens, NY; Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany; Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; as well as the 5th International SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe, NM, and the 26th São Paulo Art Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil.

Her work may be found in the collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Galleries of Scotland: Modern One, Edinburgh, Scotland; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Tate Britain, London, UK; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Essenhigh lives and works in New York, NY.