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Inka Essenhigh
Flowers in Starlight, 2018"I feel like this is just a giant correction, and there’s so much that will be good going forward. For example, when we talk about the earth and how interconnected we are, we always had that as an idea, that we’re interconnected, as a hypothetical. It is now no longer a hypothetical. It is now in our DNA, a fight or flight reaction that when something is happening across the globe, in fact it is coming. We are now catching up to actually starting to think of things globally, which will be absolutely necessary when we think about how to structure our world going forward."
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Inka Essenhigh
New Jersey 2600 C.E., 2019"I don't think that the responsibility of the artists has changed in any way. You are still there to experiment, to feel, to make works of beauty. It’s an opportunity to change, for an artist to reassess, to ask, “Is this what’s the most important thing?” If it isn’t, then it’s an opportunity to change. I feel like what I'm doing now is the most important thing that I can be doing right now, which is making works of beauty. I’m not talking about making all beautiful flowers all the time; I mean making something I would want to live with myself and look at day after day."
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Inka Essenhigh
Living room 2600 C.E., 2019"I'm going to continue to make work that can be seen in person, because that is the point, to have an experience with it and for it to hold energy while you’re there. Getting together with people online, you actually do miss being with them in person. Actually being there with them has a presence, and when you're sitting in the presence of something it has an effect on you, so I would always want to make that kind of work."
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ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Inka Essenhigh (b. 1969) is renowned for her dreamlike paintings, which translate her intuitions and encounters with contemporary society into haunting, playful, sometimes disturbing visual scenes. Employing a mix of automatism, imagination and “inner vision,” she translates the visible world into arabesque enamel paintings that reveal the energy, feeling and mystery lurking beyond everyday life. Complex and always enchanting, her work explores contemporary culture and nature in magical, thought-provoking ways.
Essenhigh’s most recent solo exhibition, Uchronia, at Kavi Gupta gallery in Chicago, presented a vision of a hypothetical future in which humanity has resolved its troubled relationship with the ecosphere. The goal was not to present a complete picture of this idealized future, Essenhigh says, “but rather fragments where we have to wonder how much is symbolic, how much is abstracted, or how much is literal.”
“This Uchronia may have problems,” Essenhigh explains. “I’m not posing these pictures as definitive answers. I’m posing them as possibilities—a way to begin the conversation about what we want our future to look like.”
Other recent exhibitions include Other Worlds: Inka Essenhigh at the Susquehanna Art Museum, a site-specific wall drawing at the Drawing Center in New York, Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds at The Frist Center for the Arts, Inka Essenhigh: a fine line, at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, the 2nd Berlin Biennale in Berlin Germany, and the Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Works by Essenhigh are included in the collections of the Tate London, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Seattle Art Museums, among others. -
Inka Essenhigh, Uchronia
Kavi Gupta | 835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL, 60607 1 June - 24 August 2019 Kavi Gupta is proud to present Uchronia, a solo exhibition of new works by Inka Essenhigh that envisage a hypothetical, idyllic future for the inhabitants of Earth. -
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Inka EssenhighKitchen 2623 C.E., 2018Enamel on canvas60 x 72 x 2 in
152.4 x 182.9 x 5.1 cm -
Inka EssenhighNew Flowers, 2018Enamel and spray paint on canvas24 x 20 in
61 x 50.8 cm -
Inka EssenhighNew Jersey 2600 C.E., 2019Enamel on canvas35 1/2 x 80 x 2 in
90.2 x 203.2 x 5.1 cm
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Inka EssenhighPine and Spruce, 2018Enamel on canvas24 x 20 in
61 x 50.8 cm -
Inka EssenhighThe Blazing World, 2019Enamel on canvas60 x 84 x 2 in
152.4 x 213.4 x 5.1 cm -
Inka Essenhighwelcome to the Gather-n-Hunt, a family restaurant, 3500 C.E., 2018Enamel on canvas72 x 58 x 2 in
182.9 x 147.3 x 5.1 cm
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Art in Lockdown: Inka Essenhigh
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