Elizabeth Ernst’s pieces at Catherine Edelman captivate the same way the circus does, creating layers of illusion. Her miniature installation, G.E. Circus, consists of performers made of Sculpey painted white and arranged on a table with a few tiny props she made herself. Ernst has also taken black-and-white photographs of the figures, lightly painted over them, and written life stories for her “characters,” printed in wall texts; other photographs of the performers place them in miniature sets she created, and there are four collages that include painted-over photos. On the black-and-white photographs she sometimes paints colorful details, adding red lipstick and a blue dress to Audrey Margaret Kelly, for instance. Mostly she just adds a subtle fleshiness, however–a casual glance might fool you into thinking these people were real. But in her work no level is any more “real” than any other.
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Ernst believes most artists explore the same issues their whole lives. “If you really look at the history of your work,” she says, “you’ll see threads that you can trace from childhood.” For her one thread is her brother, who has cerebral palsy. Though smart, he’s hard of hearing, walks with difficulty, and has always been emotionally younger than his years. “The work that I’m doing now is a result of how people viewed David as a freak,” Ernst says. “Other kids would stare and treat him like he was stupid. When kids made fun of him, I would beat them up.” (Today David, who was not expected to live beyond 20, lives with their mom and plays the stock market.) Ernst’s interest in photography began with David too. Because he liked to take snapshots on family vacations, their dad bought him a whole darkroom kit, but he wasn’t good with “practical details”–he’d make mistakes, like opening photo paper in the light. Ernst felt bad that her father’s gift was going unused, so at 12 she began making and printing photographs herself; before that she’d painted still lifes.
Ernst has always loved circuses: “I was fascinated that people were paying money to see others that you would now call physically challenged–the pretzel guy who contorts his body, the bearded lady, the smallest woman in the world.” She’d photographed circuses as an undergrad and resumed a decade ago. Her current show had its origin in neck surgery she had a year and a half ago. Recuperating, she felt she was going stir-crazy and started sculpting figures. “After making a whole circus,” she says, she began “thinking about who these people were, and wanted to give them a history.” Oscar (the Elephant Man), the wall text says, is of “above average intelligence” but was “born with the physical appearance of an elephant. . . . [His] parents sold him to the G.E. Circus when he was eight.” Ernst says that in the circus world she’s created, “The freaks think they’re the norm because there’s so many of them. They’ve discovered a sense of belonging.”
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