Entering the exhibition “Gaela Erwin: Facing the Subject” at the Speed Art Museum transports you through a world of symbolism — both fascinating and repelling. The exhibit, two years in the making, is the brainchild of both the artist and Julien Robson, curator of contemporary art at the Speed. The collaboration places Erwin’s series of paintings of herself in the guise of saints and martyrs in juxtaposition with historical pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries, along with work by contemporary artists Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith. An almost voyeuristic spell will be cast on viewers, evoking strong emotions on themes of mortality, pain and spiritual transformation.
Erwin, who resides in Louisville, was born in 1951 in Franklin, Ind., and showed an aptitude for art early in life. (Her mother recalls her drawing her first self-portrait at the age of three.) Since then she has honed her skills as a perceptual painter applying centuries-old traditions and techniques in ingenious new ways. The series at the center of the exhibit, the saint and martyr self-portraits, revolve around the lore of the venerated. The images — Erwin refers to them as fairy tales — are housed in wooden frames with a small predella painted with a key artifact from the identity of the saint. The piercing frontal gaze of the portraits, combined with their related histories and vestigial images, are powerfully haunting.
Adding to the drama of her paintings is Erwin’s use of light, which creates a stark realism with a Caravaggio-like flare. In Self-Portrait as St. Apollonia Erwin employs brightness and shadows to accentuate a pained expression, conveying a feeling of horror. St. Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists, lost all of her teeth during an attack for refusing to renounce her faith, so Erwin renders her mouth agape, with tears streaming down the bridge of a nose darkened by shadows. An upper set of teeth appears in the predella. 
Other pieces featured in the exhibit complement these suffering saints. Viewers can see how the historical portraits influenced Erwin, while the art of her contemporaries — like Kiki Smith’s Untitled, a skin of latex with glass spinal column inside a Plexiglas vitrine — conjures up images of saints common in European Catholic churches, but in a way that reinforces a reverence for the fragility of life and the strength of the spirit.
“Gaela Erwin: Facing the Subject” will be at the Speed through June 25. For more information call 634-2700 or visit www.speedmuseum.org.
— Melissa Duley
