New Flower Paintings By Inka Essenhigh Coming to Victoria Miro

Artists have depicted flowers through art history to such an extent that the still life genre has a history of its own. In contemporary times, this representation can be interpreted as going beyond nature appreciation and moving into the field of environmental concerns.

For instance, the paintings of New York-based artist Inka Essenhigh unravel her utmost desire to construct new realities centered on the existence of plants, in her case, flowers. In the past, she has earned the status of one of the most recognizable faces of Pop Surrealism who moved from automatic drawing to using narrative content while exploring mythology, landscapes, and the liaison between pastoral and urban.

The selection of her most recent imaginary landscapes will be presented on Essenhigh’s fifth solo exhibition at Victoria Miro gallery in Venice to confirm both her stylistic and technical excellence.

Representing The Uncanny Flowers

Whether the narratives she portrays are focused on humans or other organisms, they are without doubt embedded with symbolism. In these new paintings, flowers take the spotlight and seem to be blossoming freely and without interruption. Wild, yet delicate, depicted motifs form a spectacular image of nature taking over.

This brings us closer to the artist’s interest in articulating the outwardly, non-human sentiment of the organisms that surround us, such as plants and animals. Through her paintings, Essenhigh exploits formal, decorative, erotic, and hierarchical considerations, and her medium of choice - enamel, underlines the qualities of luminosity, flatness, and viscosity, making the subjects in her paintings seem both of this world and not.

Inka Essenhigh at Victoria Miro

Paintings like the panoramic Blue Field, 2021, and Blue Moss, 2021, perfectly illustrate Essenhigh’s color pallet that is rarely found in nature, but also her mastering line that creates a fluidity between her motifs that brings into foray a psychological aspect of her work.

These paintings that look like backdrops from Alice in Wonderland could be perceived as esoteric and ecological, but they also unmistakably bring into light the urgency of interspecies communication that can inspire a better understanding of our human realities.

The Inka Essenhigh exhibition will be on display at Victoria Miro gallery in Venice, Italy from November 6th until December 11th, 2021.

Featured image: Portrait of Inka Essenhigh. Photo: Kyle Dorosz