Inka Essenhigh Publication 2026 by Miles McEnery Gallery

INKA ESSENHIGH

511 West 22nd Street

515 West 22nd Street

525 West 22nd Street

520 West 21st Street

New York NY 10011

INKA ESSENHIGH: THE POWER OF CREATIVE CONFIDENCE Carol Kino It’s late June, and I’m visiting Inka Essenhigh at her Lower East Side studio to see the works that will be exhibited in her upcoming show. Right away, she starts telling me how she makes a painting — what sparks the initial idea, how it evolves, how she knows it’s complete. “This one’s done,” she says, as we look at a landscape she started in the summer of 2025, “meaning that I have not picked it up for the past four months.”1 Now called Northern Woods (2025), it’s a dark, complex forest scene that reveals itself to be more and more richly colored and fantastical the longer one looks. The gray woodland floor is dappled with spots of golden light and carpeted with verdant moss that erupts into floppy trumpets of pale green fungi. The bark of the trees is so carefully articulated that each individual plant seems ready to speak, or even to reach out and embrace you with its branches, like an animated Disney creature. In between, human-sized flowers preen their drooping petals, and a giant yellow blossom prances through a central clearing, suggesting a chrysanthemum unleashed from an ukiyo-e print. Nearby hangs another landscape, Creation of Eden (2026), that’s completely phantasmagoric. Here, within a hot orange space, gray-blue trees appear to be subdividing and birthing new forms of life. One sprouts pumpkins and a sinuous spotted dog while another mutates into humanoid shapes, a tower of moths, and a flock of scarlet birds. In the distance, standing among trees and flowers, a woman nuzzles noses with a large fawn, and a giant cat rubs up against the legs of a boy. You can almost hear the purring. “It’s a love painting,” Inka explains. “Things are unfolding. They’re in the process of multiplying and dividing. The Garden of Eden is being formed as you watch.”

Inka Essenhigh, Cheerleaders and Sky, 1999, Enamel on canvas, 78 x 90 inches (198.1 x 228.6 cm), Private Collection.

When she makes a painting, Inka says, even if she starts with an initial idea, she really never knows what she’ll end up with until she gets there. And because she’s working with enamel, she doesn’t have to know; she can keep sanding down and repainting. “Things just keep emerging and disappearing until I find what I want.” Then she refines details, asking herself questions like, Is that what rain or mist feels like? Is that what sunspots are like? She often makes small adjustments over many months before she’s satisfied. She likes the idea that “the thought, the sketch, the study, the final result is all happening right on this one canvas.” Since I first met Inka in the 1990s, I’ve always found it fascinating to talk with her about painting. She has done so much painting herself, knows so many painters, and understands the history of painting so well that everything she has to say on the subject is illuminating. And her way of working — feeling her way into each piece intuitively, but with the experience and technique to back it up — rings true for anyone engaged in any creative field. When we first met, New York was still emerging from the long aftermath of the late 1980s art market recession, and Inka was one of the few artists around who actually seemed to have a career. And not just any career: in 1999, just before her solo debut at Deitch Projects, she became an art star overnight, when she was hailed for reinventing painting — together with John Currin, Cecily Brown, and a few others — in a major piece in New York magazine.2 (Written by Phoebe Hoban, Jean-Michel

Inka Essenhigh, Brush with Death, 2004, Oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches (152.4 x 121.9 cm), Private Collection.

Basquiat’s biographer, and illustrated with a glamour shot of the artists by Timothy GreenfieldSanders, this story was hotly debated; the art critic Jerry Saltz, then writing for The Village Voice, called its ideas “so annoying.”3) Inka was already celebrated as a neo-surrealist, courtesy of the 1998 show Pop Surrealism, held at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, as surrealism enjoyed its first resurgence.4 I certainly remember being wowed by Inka’s work: The intense colors, slick enamel surfaces, hardedged shapes, cartoonish Dalí-esque figures, and crazy anime detailing (then called “Japonisme”) still sing in my mind. One painting in particular, which I remember seeing at Deitch, was unforgettable— called Cheerleaders and Sky (1999), it positions the viewer beneath four pom-pom girls, gazing up at the azure expanse beyond their stomping legs and flapping skirts. It seemed so of the moment, yelling both “girl power” and “I am here!” Indeed, when the Museum of Modern Art included this painting in its 2007 Comic Abstraction exhibition, Inka said in the online audio program, “My goal was to make work that looked like it could not have been made at any other time.”5 Inka’s career mushroomed, and she went on to show with an even more famous dealer, Mary Boone. Then in 2001, before the World Trade Center fell, she bucked all that success, left Boone, and completely changed her style, ditching enamel for oil paint and bidding goodbye to the fashionably conceptual look that had made her a style and market darling. As the scenes she painted grew more three-dimensional and her people looked more real, fantastical elements emerged. So did emotion,

Inka Essenhigh, The Grass at Night in July, 2006, Oil on canvas 42 x 46 inches (106.7 x 116.8 cm), Private Collection.

as in Brush with Death (2004), in which a screaming figure scrambles up into the clouds, away from a pair of bony arms, like the memory of a nightmare.

Inka’s willingness to change her way of working surprised a lot of people. But it was very much in keeping with her personality. Even through all that celebrity, she always seemed to stay true to herself — frank, daring, unafraid. She says now that even though she loves her early work (and continues to recognize herself in her early paintings), she felt locked into her style and technically stuck, unable to figure out how to express emotion or create detailing and deep space. Her change was about “artistic expression — creative freedom!” she says, laughing. But it was also about creative confidence: “being young, having had success, and going, ‘Oh, I can do this again.’” Since then, her work has been through many phases and permutations. She has explored urban and rural subject matter and has experimented with different ways to start a painting. At one point, she would start with a doodle, committing herself to going where it led; she later chose to make beautiful work — “paintings that I really wanted to live with.” (She made this decision in 2006, when her husband, Steve Mumford, was frequently overseas as a combat artist in Iraq and Afghanistan.) The result was a focus on nature, as in The Grass at Night in July (2006), a painting of a rabbit in a crepuscular garden lit by fireflies. Her concentration on nature intensified three years later, when she and Steve began spending summers in Maine, and “all of a sudden everything kind of seemed right,” she says. After a period

during which she shifted between oil and enamel, she returned to enamel in 2016 and discovered that “I could turn it into something three-dimensional,” she says. “Maybe I learned a few things by playing with the oil paint. Now I have enough elbow room and enough control over the medium to express what I want.” Which returns us to the paintings in this exhibition. They continue a theme that Inka has focused on recently: creating flower paintings and nature scenes which, while wholly invented, still communicate the beauty and allure of nature. While some are clearly fantastical, like the Garden of Eden painting, others reflect the scenes and plants that inspired them — at least that’s Inka’s take. To my mind, they are all fairly surreal. The Berkshires (2026) presents a hilly green landscape in a storm just as light breaks through the rain, but while Inka spent months obsessing over the way the sun hits each blade of grass, the giant dark cloud in the sky stomps through the hills on two sturdy legs, as lustily as the cheerleaders in her 1999 painting. Mountain Laurel (2026), one of three pink flower paintings in the show, offers a somewhat realist view into the heart of the blossom, but in such detailed close-up that it’s utterly disorienting. Another, Flowering Tree (2025) suggests an Art Nouveau-like lily of the valley enlarged into a tree, like something out of the 1940 Disney classic Fantasia. Then there’s Matisse’s Window (2026), inspired by Henri Matisse’s iconic The Blue Window (1913) and something of a tour de force, because it combines so many different elements and types of painting. Matisse’s work, made just before the First World War, as he was first exploring cubism, depicts the landscape outside his bedroom window at night, as seen through the objects on his wife’s dressing table, and it is famously painted in multiple shades of blue. Inka admires it for those many blues, the feeling of being indoors and outdoors at once, and the cool, contemporary quality of the lighting. “To me, this is the picture of modernity,” she says, while her version is “a little bit more Maine.” Maybe so, if Maine were some futuristic planet reenvisioned by the desert transcendentalist Agnes Lawrence Pelton. Here, the stem of an amaryllis seems to have fused with its vase, and a conch shell

emits an orange glow as though it’s electrified. A tiny yellow madonna statuette opens her arms toward the window, as if blessing the mysterious blue landscape beyond, which throbs with grasses, flowers, bushes, and trees as it stretches to the mountains. A pale moon hovers above, suggesting a lamp or maybe even a spaceship. If Matisse’s The Blue Window sums up the modern, Inka’s Matisse’s Window seems poised to zoom into some unknowable future. Carol Kino’s writing about art, artists, and the art world has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, WSJ., The New York Times, T magazine, The Atlantic, and just about every major art magazine. She received a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library for her first book, Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines, published by Scribner in 2024.

NOTES

Unless otherwise noted, quotes by the artist are from conversations with the author in June, July, and September of 2026. 2. Phoebe Hoban, “The Mod Squad,” New York, January 11, 1999: 30—37. 3. Jerry Saltz, “Heat Seekers,” The Village Voice, February 2, 1999: 125. 4. In 1998 the museum was called the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. 5. Inka Essenhigh, online audio for Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making, Museum of Modern Art, March 4—June 11, 2007. https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/195/2608

Aqua Vitae, 2024 Enamel on canvas 32 x 28 inches 81 x 71 cm

Flowering Tree, 2025

Enamel on canvas 54 x 36 inches 137 x 91 cm

Northern Woods, 2025

Enamel on canvas 42 x 60 inches 107 x 152 cm

Pink Cabbage, 2025 Enamel on canvas 28 x 32 inches 71 x 81 cm

Creation of Eden, 2026

Enamel on canvas 84 x 66 inches 213 x 168 cm

Komorebi, 2026 Enamel on canvas 50 x 40 inches 127 x 102 cm

Lambs Ear, 2026 Enamel on canvas 50 x 40 inches 127 x 102 cm

Matisse’s Window, 2026 Enamel on canvas 60 x 52 inches 152 x 132 cm

Mountain Laurel, 2026

Enamel on canvas 42 1/4 x 60 inches 107 x 152 cm

Sunflower, 2026 Enamel on canvas 60 x 52 inches 152 x 132 cm

The Berkshires, 2026

Enamel on canvas 36 x 54 inches 91 x 137 cm

Inka Essenhigh Born 1969 in Bellefonte, PA Lives and works in New York, NY EDUCATION 1994 MFA, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY 1992 BFA, Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2026 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2025 “Inka Essenhigh: The Greenhouse,” Victoria Miro, London, UK 2023 “Landscapes and Still Lifes,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2021 Victoria Miro, Venice, Italy 2020 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2019 “Other Worlds: Inka Essenhigh,” Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA “Uchronia,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL 2018 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

“Inka Essenhigh: Manhattanhenge,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY “A Fine Line,” Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; traveled to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI 2016 “Inka Essenhigh: Between Worlds,” Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN 2015 “Stars and Flowers: New Paintings and Works on Paper,” Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO 2014 “Comet Dust & Crystal Shards,” Jacob Lewis Gallery, New York, NY Joseph V. Canzani Center, Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH 2012 “Project Room: Inka Essenhigh,” Pace Prints, New York, NY “The Natural and the Man-Made,” Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2011 “Inka Essenhigh: New Editions and Monoprints,” Pace Prints, New York, NY 2010 “The Old New Age,” 303 Gallery, New York, NY 2008 Victoria Miro, London, UK 2006 303 Gallery, New York, NY

2005 Victoria Miro, London, UK DA2 Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Spain 2004 Sint-Lukasgalerie, Brussels, Belgium “Etchings,” Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York, NY 2003 Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL Galleria il Capricorno, Venice, Italy Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland 2002 Victoria Miro, London, UK 303 Gallery, New York, NY

2001 “Works on Paper,” Project Room, Victoria Miro, London, UK “Works on paper,” Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY 2000 Victoria Miro, London, UK Mary Boone Gallery, New York, NY 1999 “New Paintings,” Deitch Projects, New York, NY “American Landscapes: Recent Paintings by Inka Essenhigh,” New Room of Contemporary Art, AlbrightKnox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY 1998 “Recent Paintings,” Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, NY 1997 “Wallpaper Paintings,” La MaMa La Galleria, New York, NY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2026 “Imagining New Futures,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL “Meet Me in the Forest,” Cafesjian Art Trust Museum, Shoreview, MN “The Distance We Keep,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Creative Terrains,” National Galleries of Scotland: Modern One, Edinburgh, Scotland 2025 “Victoria Miro: 40 Years,” Victoria Miro, London, UK “Luminous Forms,” Ucross Art Gallery, Clearmont, WY 2024 “All Bangers, All The Time: 25th Anniversary Exhibition,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “A Particular Kind of Heaven,” Karma, Thomaston, ME 2023 “Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection” (curated by Julien Robson), Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY “Farnsworth at 75: New Voices from Maine in American Art,” Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME 2022 “Why I Make Art” (curated by Brian Alfred), Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Other Worlds Than This: The Supernatural in Art,” Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY “Psychedelic Landscape,” Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, NY “If you forget my name, You will go astray,” Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA “The View from Here,” Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME “COMPETERE: An Exhibition of Artist Couples,” The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA

“Empire of Water,” The Church, Sag Harbor, NY “Disruption: Works from the Vicki and Kent Logan Collection” (curated by Laura F. Almeida), Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO 2021 “Kavi Gupta at Regan Rohde’s Art & Conversation,” West Palm Beach, FL “Landscape & Memory,” Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY “New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century,” Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA “Wild at Heart,” Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY 2020 “Really.” (curated by Inka Essenhigh and Ryan McGinness), Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Do You Think it Needs A Cloud?,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Life During Wartime: Art in the Age of Coronavirus” (online exhibition), University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL “The Figure in Solitude” (online exhibition), Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL “Radical Optimism” (online exhibition), Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL “Skirting the Line | Painting between Abstraction & Representation,” Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME 2019 “FIXED CONTAINED” (curated by Tomokazu Matsuyama), Kotaro Nukaga, Tokyo, Japan “Not All Doors Are The Same” (curated by Michael J Ruple and Rob Zeller), Booth Gallery, New York, NY Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY

2018 “Le Nuove Frontiere della Pittura,” Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy “Parallel Lives,” Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2016 “dead among the dead!,” Ellis King, Dublin, Ireland “Imagine,” Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy “Introductions,” La MaMa La Galleria, New York, NY 2015 “Eden, éden” (curated by Timothée Chaillou), Galerie Torri, Paris, France “The Ukrainian Diaspora: Women Artists 1908-2015” (curated by Dr. Adrienne Kochman), The Ukrainian Museum, New York, NY “Painters NYC,” Páramo Galeria, Guadalajara, Mexico and El Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños, Oaxaca, Mexico 2014 “Disturbing Innocence,” The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY “Sargent’s Daughters,” Sargent’s Daughters, New York, NY 2013 “The Golden Ass,” Blindarte Contemporanea, Naples, Italy “Cinematic Visions: Painting at the Edge of Reality,” Victoria Miro, London, UK “Pivot Points: 15 Years & Counting,” Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL 2012 “Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination,” Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; traveled to Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, Canada; and the Glenbow Art Museum, Calgary, Canada

“The Sound of Painting,” Palazzo Saluzzo Paesana, Turin, Italy 2011 “Inka Essenhigh & Richard Van Buren: Un/Natural Splendor,” Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME “Inside the Painter’s Studio,” Stephen D. Paine Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA “Creating the New Century: Contemporary Art from the Dicke Collection,” Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH “Counterpoint,” Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME 2010 “Between Picture and Viewer: The Image in Contemporary Painting,” Visual Arts Gallery, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

2007 “Counterparts: Contemporary Painters and Their Influences,” Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA “The Game of Multiple Meaning: Symbolism and the Art of the Present,” Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany “Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY “COMIX,” Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark “Imagination Becomes Reality,” Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie/Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany 2006 “Painting Codes,” Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea, Monfalcone, Italy “The Compulsive Line: Etching 1900 to Now,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY “USA Today: New American Art from the Saatchi Collection,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

“Imagination Becomes Reality. Part III: Talking Pictures,” Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany “Motion on Paper,” Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, UK “Art on Paper 2006: The 39th Exhibition,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 2005 “Life and Limb” (curated by David Humphrey), Feign Contemporary, New York, NY “Baroque and Neobaroque. The Hell of the Beautiful,” DA2 Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Spain 2004 “5th International SITE Santa Fe Biennial: Disparities & Deformations: Our Grotesque” (curated by Robert Storr), SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM 26th São Paulo Art Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil “Funny Cuts: Cartoons and Comics in Contemporary Art,” Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany “Perspectives at 25,” Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX 2003 “Painting Pictures: Painting and Media in the Digital Age,” Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany “Comic Release: Negotiating Identity for a New Generation,” Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; traveled to Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA; and the University of North Texas, Denton, TX “Supernova: Art of the 1990s from the Logan Collection,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA “Reverie: Works from the Collection of Douglas S. Cramer,” Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY “Drawing,” G Gallery, Washington, D.C. “Heaven & Hell,” Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York, NY

2002 “The Galleries Show,” Royal Academy of Art, London, UK “Pertaining to Painting” (curated by Paula Morsiani), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; traveled to Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX “Jay Davis, Inka Essenhigh, Christian Schuman,” Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX “La Part de l’Autre,” Carré d’Art - Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, Nîmes, France 2001 “My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation,” Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA; traveled to Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH; Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA; and the Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL “Hybrids: International Contemporary Painting,” Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK “Braille,” Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX 2nd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany “Works on paper: from Acconci to Zittel,” Victoria Miro, London, UK “Casino 2001, 1st Quadrennial of Contemporary Art,” SMAK: Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium 2000 “Greater New York: New Art in New York Now,” P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Queens, NY “The Figure: Another State of Modernism,” Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY “Deitch/Steinberg: New Editions,” Deitch Projects, New York, NY “Emotional Rescue,” Center for Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA

“To Infinity and Beyond,” Brooke Alexander, New York, NY 1999 “Pleasure Dome,” Jessica Fredericks Gallery, New York, NY “A Room with a View,” Sixth @ Prince Fine Art, New York, NY 1998 “Blade Runner,” Caren Golden Fine Art, New York, NY “The New Surrealism,” Pamela Auchincloss Project Space, New York, NY “Wild,” Exit Art/The First World, New York, NY “Pop Surrealism,” Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT “Summer Review, 98,” Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, NY “Celebrating Diversity: Contemporary Women Painters,” Hillwood Art Museum, Long Island University, Brookville, NY “ANATOMY/INTELLECT,” Stefanelli Exhibition Space, New York, NY 1997 “Sex/Industry” (curated by John Yau), Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, NY “The Art Exchange Fair,” Stefan Stux Gallery, New York, NY “Girls! Girls! Girls!,” Tricia Collins Grand Salon, New York, NY 1996 “Set Off: Inaugural Group Show,” View Room Exhibitions, New York, NY “Underexposed: Nine Young American Painters,” André Zarre Gallery, New York, NY “Featured Web Page Artist for December,” Artists’ Space, New York, NY “Night of 1000 Drawings,” Artists’ Space, New York, NY

1994 “Juried Group Show,” School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

SELECT COLLECTIONS

1993 “Young Ukrainian American Painters Group Show,” The Ukrainian Museum, New York, NY “Work-Play: Picture Thinking and the Analogical Imagination,” Visual Arts Gallery, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY “Group Show: Inka Essenhigh, Stephen Mumford and Leemour Pelli: Paintings,” Wooster Street Gallery, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2019 Arts and Letters Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY

National Galleries of Scotland: Modern One, Edinburgh, Scotland

2014 CCAD Joseph V. Canzani Alumni Award for Excellence, Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH

Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY

Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL

Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY Tate Britain, London, UK Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

INKA ESSENHIGH 5 November 2026 – 9 January 2027 Miles McEnery Gallery 515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2026 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2026 Carol Kino

Associate Director Julia Schlank, New York, NY Catalogue Design Laurie Mullowney, New York, NY Photography by Dan Bradica, New York, NY Christopher Burke Studios, New York, NY ISBN: 979-8-3507-6936-4 Cover: Creation of Eden, (detail), 2026