Inka Essenhigh paints Subway as a commuters’ opera. Her smooth surface and seamless paint replicates the sublime precision of urban life. Essenhigh’s corporate toned environment becomes a stage on which her strange and distorted figures conjoin in symphonic movement, leaving plastic trails in their haste as they swoon through the scene. Turning everyday banality into surreal case study, Essenhigh gives humorous portrayal of people at their rush hour worst. Drawing stylistic reference from both graphic novels and golden age animation, caricatured city-types gain comically heroic status, rendering a humble slice of America as grand theatrical drama.