The New York-based artist’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and first at Victoria Miro Venice features new paintings from her ongoing series of botanical works in enamel paint, a medium the artist first worked with two decades ago. These works meld an exuberant exterior world with an energetic interior consciousness. Whether painting human or other organisms, Essenhigh builds finely wrought narratives that, at times tinged with symbolism, can be read as spirited visions of the here and now. In these new paintings, flowers step forward, uprooted from landscape or still life traditions to become outlandish and feisty protagonists in their own right.

About the artist

Born in 1969, Inka Essenhigh lives and works in New York. Recently, she has exhibited at international institutional venues including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine, 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 (2016 and 2012).

Her work is in the collections of major museums including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Denver Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Tate, London; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Miles McEnery Gallery, New York (2020); Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA (2019); Uchronia, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, USA (2019); Inka Essenhigh: A Fine Line, MOCA Virginia, Virginia Beach, USA (2018) travelling to Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA (2019); alongside Inka Essenhigh: Manhattanhenge, Drawing Centre, New York, USA (2018).