"Mass Suicide" from Special Forces #2
A swirling, hallucinatory composition rendered in Essenhigh's signature sinuous lines and luminous oil enamel, depicting anonymous figures merging and dissolving into one another in a fluid, almost cartoonish choreography of collective destruction. The smooth, glossy surface amplifies the work's unsettling tension between decorative beauty and dark subject matter, as bodies appear to melt into a shared, undulating fate. Essenhigh transforms an act of mass tragedy into something disturbingly elegant, blurring the boundary between violence and ornament.
- Medium
- oil enamel on canvas
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Contemporary Art Day Sale
May 17, 2013
More by Inka Essenhigh
Artists in conversation
John Currin
American · b. 1962
Currin similarly merges old master painterly technique with dark and unsettling figurative content, using glossy surfaces and sinuous forms to create a tension between decorative elegance and disturbing subject matter rooted in the human body.
Cecily Brown
British · b. 1969
Brown's oil paintings feature figures dissolving and merging into swirling, fluid compositions with a similarly hallucinatory energy, balancing seductive painterly beauty against chaotic and often violent or erotic collective human scenes.
Sue Williams
American · b. 1954
Williams combines cartoon influenced linework with densely interwoven figurative scenes rendered in vibrant color and smooth surfaces, exploring dark social themes through a visual language that shares Essenhigh's tension between playful aesthetics and troubling content.
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