Erica Schreiner: Feminine Transgressions

CONTACT: Navindren Hodges (212) 333-2640 info@billhodgesgallery.com FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Erica Schreiner: Feminine Transgressions

529 West 20th Street, Suite 10E, New York, NY 10011 19 January 2023 – 18 February 2023

NEW YORK, NY, January 5th – Bill Hodges Gallery presents Erica Schreiner: Feminine Transgressions, an exhibition of performative, intimate feminist video art seen through Erica’s ethereal VHS lens. Erica brings to life ephemeral deconstructions of desire by experimenting with temporality, gender and organic sensuality. Through her allegorical storytelling, Erica shares her world where butterflies are eaten alive, where menstrual blood is drunk. In this place, Erica tears free from patriarchal suffocation and alchemizes dreams of pink flowering trees into reality. Through combined horror and beauty, she shows what is possible. With works that engage themes like addiction, ritual, and catharsis, Feminine Transgressions offers a portal through which viewers get to witness the surreal, nostalgic, blush-tinted magic of an artist’s feminal self-discovery. In her signature style of VHS filmmaking, Erica commands a sensibility of radical interiority, imbuing the imagery of her narrative videos with a timelessness that defies convention. The subject of Erica’s work flows through the abstracted landscape of home and boudoir. Subverting etiquette of social expectation, she uncovers the hidden power of her feminine body. Featuring five courageous films and five film stills, Feminine Transgressions, Erica’s second solo exhibition at Bill Hodges Gallery welcomes viewers to reconsider how gender can be lived, embodied, and deconstructed. In Erica’s videos, body movement and gestures become compulsive actions that paradoxically signify empowerment through their macabre and comical repetition. Furthermore, the body assumes a dominant role in demonstrating the link between the mind and the body itself, becoming the canvas through which the artist expresses herself.

Blood and Flower Still from Birth, 2022 Inkjet Print on Paper Image: 13 ½ x 17 ¾ in. Paper: 16 x 20 in. From Edition of 5

Erica Schreiner has exhibited her work extensively throughout the course of her career both in the United States and internationally. She has completed more than 100 video works of performative art, two feature films, and several music videos. In 2021, Erica received a New York City Artist Corps Grant for her second feature film, The Special People. Her most recent work, Blue Transcendence, is screening at The New York Filmmakers’ Cooperative in February. Three of her films, Birth, Psychic Driving, and Tara are screening at Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin this October. To view excerpts from Erica’s videos, please visit http://www.youtube.com/analogcinema.

529 West 20th Street, #10E, New York, NY 10011 ∙ 212-333-2640 ∙ www.billhodgesgallery.com

The Tale of the Bravest Warrior is an allegorical story of a bird who is able to survive impossible odds. The eggs are repeatedly eaten, boiled and smashed. And at the end, I’m eating egg after egg but then a bird, by way of magic, survives and flies away. To me, it’s just a very simple story of resilience and surviving seemingly impossible odds. Not just surviving, but flying.

A lot of my work shows metamorphosis, through an evolution experienced by myself or carefully selected symbols or personal objects. I use a lot of eggs, fruit, flowers, and butterflies… symbols that represent life. When those are destroyed, they later come out as a new and different, resurrected thing. They go through a transitional process, so yes, I would say destruction is a very big theme in the work, however, the films are hopeful. After enduring the destructive processes, there is a metamorphosis, and that can be thrilling to examine.

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Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

The Tale of the Bravest Warrior, 2013 Video Installation Edition of 3 Duration: 07:08

“

In BYE DAD I couldn’t breathe, as I became more and more wrapped in plastic. Also, there’s a metamorphosis. The strawberries get smashed and become jam. That was me. I’m not a strawberry anymore. I’m not part of my family in the same way as before. But jam is still a good thing.

The Ballerina in the box breaks free of her spinning and I tear free from the plastic too. Actually, when I was filming that, it was very magical. I had the camera going and I was turning it and there’s no way I could’ve predicted that the ballerina would jump out of the box. When she did, I thought, “this is it!” It was magical because we were not only paralleling each other’s spinning, but each other’s freedom now too. ”

Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

BYE

DAD, 2021 Video Installation Edition of 3 Duration: 06:58

A woman is alone in the world of her creation. She is surrounded by her paintings of trees with pink flowers. Through repetition of visualization (painting her desire) and harnessing the power of her menstruation, she alchemizes a tree that mirrors the ones from her paintings. Birth is urging the viewer to acknowledge the power of the menstruating body and alchemize it to create a better world.

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In my films, I’m not playing a character. They’re all me. In all of these different and many videos, I’m being different people – but they all exist within me. I’ve thought about how Cindy Sherman (for example) and I think about our work differently because she embodies characters. In my work, all of these women exist within me.

Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

I search through the empty natural world – fruit rinds, dead flowers and egg shells. It came from feeling trapped in my apartment during quarantine. I made Quarantine within the first couple months of quarantine. The amount of marks I drew on the wall were the exact number of days we had been in quarantine up to that point. I felt very trapped and there was no nature near me. I live in Queens. I don’t live near a park, and the closest park was padlocked anyway. This film is about searching for what is natural and within reach. I discovered the most natural thing is my body and in my body. I am nature. I’m still part of nature even if I live in a synthetic world.

“ ”

Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

Quarantine, 2020 Video Installation Edition of 3 Duration: 08:09

Erase is the 5th film in The Disorder Series, which Bill showed in our last exhibition back in 2011. In The Disorders Series, each film is inspired by a different disorder, and Erase is about addiction. Erase gets the strongest reactions from people. It’s fascinating that we’re removed from the nature we’re eating. If you go to McDonald’s and get a chicken nugget, it doesn’t even look like an animal. But to see someone eating a beautiful butterfly… I think that’s what disturbs people about Erase – that it’s beautiful. If someone were smashing ants or cockroaches, would people feel the same way? Perhaps they already smash cockroaches, without a second thought, if they have them. Mosquitoes, fruit flies, whatever. It’s not about the consciousness of the butterfly; I think it’s about the beauty. If you took away the wings, it’s an insect. That said, it is also a life.

When I made the video, it was very painful to do. I had decided I was going to do it; I was going to eat butterflies. I didn’t give it that much thought until the camera was on and I had [them]. I thought, ‘There’s no way I can do this.’ I started sobbing, just like you see in the video. It was horrible to have to eat a living thing. I remember feeling like a monster. Even on the original tape, I was yelling at myself, “Who do you think you are?” But, I just forced myself to do it. In the end, it felt like a truthful representation of addiction. This thing that you are doing and you can’t stop; maybe you’re disgusted, but you’re still going forward, maybe it’s destructive, all these things.

Just because I did do this, it isn’t a statement that I condone it. I don’t have a stance on if it’s okay to eat butterflies or not. I don’t feel proud of having eaten butterflies. I feel proud of making good video art. But those are different things.

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Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

Erase, 2011 Video Installation Edition of 3 Duration: 07:35

The

little bird emerges following the destruction of countless eggs. This is the bravest warrior. I was inspired to create this film after my closest friend’s brother died suddenly. I wanted to communicate with her in our shared language of art. We’d found connection in shared experiences of trauma. I wanted to remind her during her time of grieving that she had it in her to survive, that she was resilient, that she has always been a brave warrior.

Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

Bird

Still from The Tale of the Bravest Warrior, 2013 Inkjet Print on Paper Edition of 5

Image: 13 1/2 x 17 ¾ in. (34.3 x 45.1 cm) Paper: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)

Spinning and spinning into suffocation, mirroriring the ballerina in the box.

Erica

Schreiner

(1983 - ) Breath

Still from BYE DAD, 2021 Inkjet Print on Paper Edition of 5

Image: 13 1/2 x 17 ¾ in. (34.3 x 45.1 cm) Paper: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)

blood

With on my hands,

this is a still frame of a moment after the alchemy, after the tree has been manifested.

Erica Schreiner (1983 - )

Blood and Flower

Still from Birth, 2022 Inkjet Print on Paper Edition of 5

Image: 13 1/2 x 17 ¾ in. (34.3 x 45.1 cm) Paper: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)

menstrual cup wine glass,

this is a still frame of a moment before the blood was mixed with wine and drunk.

Pouring blood from my into a

Erica Schreiner (1983 - ) Cup

Still from Quarantine, 2020 Inkjet Print on Paper Edition of 5

Image: 13 1/2 x 17 ¾ in. (34.3 x 45.1 cm) Paper: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)

With a Painted Lady butterfly in mouth, this is a still frame of a moment before the live butterfly is CONSUMED.

Erica Schreiner (1983 - ) Mouth

Still from Erase, 2011 Inkjet Print on Paper Edition of 5

Image: 13 1/2 x 17 ¾ in. (34.3 x 45.1 cm) Paper: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)