Art Bites

Inka Essenhigh’s paintings and prints evoke allegorical traditions in which nature and humanity are magically entwined. Her images are inspired by archetypes, representations that symbolize spiritual truths shared by people across the ages. Fantastic beings—from both the mythical past and the dream world of today—float through scenes of metamorphosis, in which rocks, water, trees, and buildings pulse with inner energy. Essenhigh’s animistic world triggers memories of a time in our lives, and in the history of our cultures, when the imagination stirred the inner world without reason or explanation. Born in 1969, Inka Essenhigh earned her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her paintings have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her works are in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Denver Art Muse...

 Sotheby’s announced an inaugural collaboration with Korean art collector and entertainment artist T.O.P, who will guest-curate a special contemporary art evening sale in Hong Kong to take place on 3 October 2016. Entitled #TTTOP, the sale makes reference to the music and film icon’s five-million-plus-follower Instagram handle, a celebrated platform on which he records and shares his daily artistic encounters. Envisioned for young collectors of his generation, the sale represents not only T.O.P’s curatorial debut at auction, but also the first auction for which Sotheby’s Hong Kong has partnered with a young collector as the curator. T.O.P curated the sale with no compensation, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Asian Cultural Council to enable cultural exchanges that nurture the talents of emerging artists in Asia and the United States. An award-winning rapper, singer-songwriter and actor, T.O.P’s stellar showbiz presence is matched by his influence as a pass...

Composed on raw linen with an economy of gesture and palette, the subjects of these nuanced paintings float in isolation. A grinning man wears a shirt emblazoned “Down and Out in Montauk,” a nod to Orwell seemingly at odds with the comfort radiating from the painting. Elsewhere, Mesler references nautical history, pairing a reduced seascape with a seafaring rhyme and the submerged outline of Melville’s white whale. Across this body of work, it becomes clear that the sea itself is not the subject, but rather, how we encounter it, whether in a state of temporary withdrawal from our everyday lives, or within a work of art. This sentiment is most clear in “Untitled (I’m Moonlighting),” which depicts a figure in a canoe at night, drawing as he drags a paintbrush through the water. The painting reads, “I’m moonlighting”, a reminder of the Mesler’s role as both a painter and an art dealer, a dichotomy that has historically existed in the careers of art world characters from Marcel Duchamp t...

 The Indiana State Museum, in partnership with Crazy Indiana Style Artists (CISA) of Lake County, Ind., is presenting Still Crazy: 30th Anniversary of CISA, an art exhibition featuring more than 30 two- and three-dimensional works of original art by CISA chronicling their 30-year history. The exhibit, on view July 2 through September 5, 2016, is a part of the museum’s bicentennial exhibition 200 Years of Indiana Art: A Cultural Legacy on view March 19 through October 2. “The artists in this show represent some of Indiana’s most intriguing modern and contemporary pieces, which help to illustrate the more edgy side of visual arts development in Indiana,” said Mark Ruschman, chief curator of fine art at the State Museum. “This group, under the direction of graffiti installation artist ISH Muhammad, showcases the immense talent and diversity associated with the state.” Items in the show range from large-scale imagery on canvas to jackets, videos, articles etc., chronicling the v...