Inka Essenhigh
Victoria Miro
London, England
3 April – 2 May 2008

by Rea Cris

New York-based painter Inka Essenhigh’s work is usually described using the words morph, elastic, surreal and amoeba. Familiar shapes resemble objects only to quickly transform into the unfamiliar. Whether we are witnessing the creation or destruction of these microcosmos she creates is unsure. Strangely traditional and futuristic at the same time, Essenhigh creates new universes unique to her. Her painting style is very slick and she uses bold inky colours, leaving no trace of the artist’s hand on the canvas, almost as if the works have been mass-produced and manufactured from lacquer.

The reason Essehigh’s paintings are so free is that, like the surrealists before her, she employs free association, simply beginning to paint and then letting the creation dictate its own direction. In this exhibition, rather than leave it to chance, Essenhigh decided to depict a particular subject matter: the changing seasons and global warming. The paintings still retain their surreal elasticity, but this time Essenhigh sketched out her ideas onto the canvas. There are blissful snow scenes and abundant blossoms in spring fields. While the colours are vibrant and the scenes almost serene, there is a strange mix of the tongue-in-cheek and foreboding in these paintings.

In “Global Warming Cloud” (2008), a cartoonish but ominous cloud creeps over a hill upon an unsuspecting person - it can only end in disaster – portrayed in a Japanese anime style (think “Princess Mononoke”). “Spring” (2007) has two girls frolicking in a green grassy field, the trees blooming their white flowers and a rabbit leaping playfully along. The longer one looks, the more the scene dissolves; the girl in the pink dress seems to be evaporating, figures hiding and spying between the foliage, the grass starts to resemble flames. Their fate is as uncertain as ours, their blissful ignorance resembling our own. “Fall” (2007) shows a girl walking home, warmly wrapped up against the approaching cold. She has a smile on her face, but alarmingly is unaware that the ghostly figure who grips her arm is rising from the graveyard she’s passing.

Essenhigh re-trains the viewer to look closely and not assume that they know beforehand what it is they are going to see. Though we may laugh and joke about what scares us the most, it is still lurking in the shadows or just around the corner.

www.inka-essenhigh.com
www.victoria-miro.com

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