Erik Schmidt. Hunting Grounds

Erik Schmidt has hunting fever. This, his latest work, focuses on the sport as used in the aristocracy to stage-manage social image. Hunting is a social game, a fixed convention--and so the artist lay in wait, observed the codes, apparel and gestures, and was allowed to slip into character. The resulting works in film and painting pick up on the sport's classic visual theme, but Schmidt's plan of attack is conceptual: In taking on the role of the hunter, he reimagines the dialectic between hunter and hunted, perpetrator and victim. Hunting Grounds not only elucidates the sport's social and symbolic consequences and explores ideas of masculinity, but also reveals and engages our enduring fascination with this archaic, male-dominated world.