INKA ESSENHIGH: THE GREENHOUSE

Victoria Miro is delighted to present The Greenhouse, an exhibition of new paintings by Inka Essenhigh.

March 14 – April 17, 2025

Inka Essenhigh’s paintings seduce and disarm in equal measure. Each painting is a complete world in itself, impeccably realised, governed by its own logic and in possession of its own narrative. Each has its own ecology and its protagonists – human, floral, or other. Each radiates its own particular quality of light. We recognise aspects of these works implicitly: the pallor of fungal matter; the weight of a poppy’s petal – even if that fungi starts to resemble the woodwind section of a ghostly orchestra or that petal looks to be migrating to human form.

Since the artist first came to prominence in the late-1990s, it could be argued that our knowledge of our surrounding reality, while utterly transformed by the speed and availability of information, has only grown more fraught with technological and ecological change. It is into these uncharted territories of perception that Essenhigh launches this new body of work.

At the same time, her virtuoso line – economical and suggestive, full of whiplashes and arabesques – creates a fluid dance within and between her motifs that seems to accentuate a hidden psychological aspect. Matthew Weinstein, writing in the catalogue that accompanied Essenhigh’s 2018 survey exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, notes that ‘her paintings are not just plant-like in their nature. They are plant-like in actuality. Their attenuated lines follow twists and turns that seem to know where they are going, like vines. We know that vines have a plan, and the plan has urgency… It has a vitality with secret rules. It will not be denied.’

How paintings impress themselves upon us, work themselves into our psyche so profoundly that we see the world through them as much as we recognise the world in them, is perhaps Essenhigh’s overarching concern. Her paintings on one level stand for a blooming consciousness. They prime the senses, heighten awareness, intoxicate and transport, and in doing so awaken in us the desire to look further, question more. We unfurl before them.