| The Chicago Reader Fred Camper  |
Art Letter (01/07/05)
www.artletter.com
 Elizabeth Ernst's Circus Performers |
When I go look at 15 or so exhibits in a given day some of the shows start to run together and I get an overall impression of the whole experience. I felt like I saw a lot of figurative art and a lot of it is really good.
The Number One most impressive show I saw was at Catherine Edelman Gallery, where Catherine is presenting the wonderful and disarming work of Elizabeth Ernst. This is multi-media the way multi-media is supposed to be. Ernst captures the essence of the circus by creating diminutive figures and placing them in scenes of her own concoction, reminiscent of Calder’s famous circus. But with Calder it was more about the animals and the motion where here it is about the people and the personalities. Maybe it’s because these little figures feel like they’ve been imbued with a soul that they are so powerful. But Elizabeth Ernst doesn’t stop there. After all this is a photography gallery. Ernst photographs her figures, prints the images, mounts them on panel and then goes over them with a monochrome paint. They don’t feel like photographs at all. Really nice, rather moving, and a meaningful and wonderful installation. This is worth going to just to see what a show looks like when both the artist and the gallery get it right.
New City Chicago
Tip of the Week
G.E. Circus
Michael Weinstein
The Joel-Peter Witkin of scenario photography, Elizabeth Ernst sculpts
her own freaks out of clay and sets them up to perform and to pose for
head shots in her "G.E. Circus," named after the manufacturer
of the oven in which the figurines are baked solid. Like Witkin, who shoots
real deformed people, Ernst is grim and mordant about the ubiquitous accidents
of the human condition, yet deeply compassionate for the victims--all
of us. Always profound, but reluctant to go full throttle in the past,
Ernst is now at the peak of her powers, trusting in her consummate artistry
to let all her complex emotions hang out. "Oscar (The Elephant Man),"
with his wrinkled trunk and forehead, lugubrious piercing eyes, muscular
arms and vulnerable potbelly leads the parade in Ernst's all-too-human
tragic-comedy.
Red Streak
"The G.E. Circus," "Sleep" and "Nine Symptoms"
Joanne Hinkel
If Barnum & Bailey met film noir, the marriage would be close to what Elizabeth Ernst is able to concoct in "G.E. Circus." Long before HBO produced "Carnivale," Ernst was photographically documenting her creation of a fictitious circus and the stories that take place within it. In Ernst's world, animals take on their handlers and freaks play the main parts. The cast of performers, modeled from Sculpey, are on display along with the one of a kind gelatin silver prints that celebrate them. Also exhibited are two series of calotype photographs by Dan Estabrook: "Sleep," which focuses on states of dreams, and "Nine Symptoms," which documents the physical symptoms of falling in love. Thanks to a recent expansion, the three shows fit nicely into the Catherine Edelman Gallery space.