Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 9

Stefanie Schneider
Circle of Magic - Spellbound (29 Palms, CA)

2009

$380
£281.97
€328.46
CA$528.96
A$589.05
CHF 306.57
MX$7,262.89
NOK 3,904.36
SEK 3,669.72
DKK 2,450.73
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

Circle of Magic - Spellbound (29 Palms, CA) - 2009, 20x24cm, Edition 8/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #5919.08. Not mounted. THE GREATER THE EMPTINESS THE GRANDER THE ART – Stefan Gronert Not “Twenty-six Gasoline Stations” but “29 Palms, CA”! Forty-two years after Ed Ruscha’s legendary book, there is no gasoline station at the beginning of the book that is here at hand. Instead it is the open-hearted Radha – with orange hair, pink-colored overalls and a bashful, or rather cunning, gaze that is directed downward – with which this book begins! And with her and with Max – attention: a woman –, one whose appearance is by the same styling, it comes to an end as well – after Radha has in the meantime colored her fingernails pink, again endowed with the same open-heartedness and the same look which now, however, reveals in combination with her altered facial expression an “old-maidish” turning away from the viewer. This may serve as an example for a vivid and understandable transformation that flows into a large-scale representation of a cheerless settlement beneath a shining, blue sky – there a figure, lost straightaway, becomes overwhelmed. Pictures which in 1998/99 play in the harsh California sunlight or in spaces that are not exactly cozy and comfortable. “Play” is the correct word in this regard, for precisely in view of the pictures of persons, there remains more than just doubt as to whether we are looking at staged scenes or have simply happened upon the high-strung “reality” of a (wannabe) film world. Yet not all the pictures have the same character of a glaring, plastic world. Upon flipping through the pages, we also encounter unpretentious, literally “colorless” scenes in undefined interiors, or unspectacular views resembling a still life and opening out onto a nowhere land. That which connects all participants in these picture-worlds is the observation that they appear to be exhausted, lost, empty or uncertain about their existence. One is almost reminded of the empty gazes and loneliness of the protagonists in the pictures of large cities painted by Manet or Degas in the era of Early Modernism. With one exception, all the photographs which are reproduced here, which originally measure 60 by 70 cm but which here, in their present size and configuration, make productive use of the possibilities presented by the medium of the book, manifest several elements of B-movies: smoking, naked, made-up and muscular persons who are not inclined to conform entirely to the vision of Hollywood dreams. Beauty and vexation, eroticism and loneliness enter into a mixture which reveals the rift between desire and truth. From a distance, one is reminded of the “Untitled Film Stills” of Cindy Sherman, which in this regard are not nearly as drastic. Yet whereas her photos from the seventies are characterized by a cool, objective mode of representation in historicizing black and white, the photographs of Stefanie Schneider evince a soft, sometimes seemingly pictorial visual language with a coloration ranging from the pale to the artificial-glaring. As in many other pictures of Stefanie Schneider which often present themselves to us as sequences, these photos refer back as well to the perceptual stereotypes of film. Making use of instant photography, proceeding from which significantly enlarged C-prints come into being, her pictures summon up the impression of a narration without ultimately becoming part of a plot that is readable in a linear fashion. The illusion of the narrative element, however, simply enhances the experience of a renunciation of just this aspect. For the picture titles as well – and also the title of this publication – provide no real help with the imaginary construction of a story. Nevertheless, names return which include the first name of the artist herself: hence is everything not in fact a game but rather a series of authentic and instantaneous images, or is it after all nothing other than a staging, a game – how real is life? The paucity of plot elements, which contradicts all expectation of a cinematic style, as well as the emptiness and loneliness of the persons, enters into a peculiar, sometimes seemingly surreal association with the magic of the sun-drenched expanses of the dreamlike landscape. Just as the fantasy and imagination of the viewer are stimulated, so to the same great extent does the redemption of these visual figures of love founder on a void whose glaze is created, not least of all, by the peculiar blurriness of the photographic representation. The seemingly amateur character of these pictures, which have in no way been treated with any excessive scrupulousness, leaves us with a stimulating incertitude as to their interpretation, one in which the spheres of reality, fiction or dream are scarcely capable any longer of being differentiated. Thus the gaps and the scenic openness of what is presented ultimately set in motion a self-appraisal. So what remains after “29 Palms, CA”? Perhaps that hope which deviates from the saying of Ruscha that is quoted in the title: The stronger the photography the better the reality will be!
  • Creator:
    Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
  • Creation Year:
    2009
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 7.88 in (20 cm)Width: 9.45 in (24 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    40x50cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Price: $650
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Morongo Valley, CA
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: 59191stDibs: LU652316251312

More From This Seller

View All
Circle of Magic - Shazam (29 Palms, CA)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Circle of Magic - Shazam (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 20x24cm, Edition 6/10. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory #2823.06. Not m...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Circle of Magic - A Wish - 29 Palms, CA
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
A Wish (Circle of Magic) from the 29 Palms, CA project - 2009 40x48cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Circle of Magic (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary, Landscape, Magic
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Circle of Magic - from the 29 Palms, CA series - 2009 40x48cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Art...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Circle of Magic - Shazam (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, Contemporary, Women
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Circle of Magic - Shazam (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 50x60cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Digital C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Artist Inventory No. 2823. Signature lab...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Circle of Magic - A Wish II (29 Palms, CA) - Polaroid, 21st Century, Contemporar
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
'A Wish II' (Circle of Magic) - from the 29 Palms, CA project - 2009 40x50cm, Edition 1/10 Digital C-Print based on the Polaroid. Certificate and signature label. Artist inventory...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Circle of Magic - Elixirs (29 Palms, CA)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Circle of Magic - Elixirs (29 Palms, CA) - 2009 20x24cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inv...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

You May Also Like

Amboy Road, California - The Sundance Series - American landscape color photo
By Richard Heeps
Located in Cambridge, GB
Titled the 'Sundance Series', these artworks are a development of traditional landscape photographs and they have created a unique perspective as if captured through a telescope or a...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

Still Life # 1, Desert Oasis, Requiem
By Dean West
Located in New York, NY
Ed. of 7. A wide range of environments and character types are explored in the works of Miami Beach-based Dean West. The Australian-born artist is best known for his intricate and h...
Category

2010s Color Photography

Materials

C Print

Cindy Green & Blue, Palm Springs, CA
By Kali
Located in New York, NY
Estate stamped on the reverse
Category

1970s Photography

Materials

Polaroid

Vogue, September 2014, Lone Pine, California
By Thomas Jackson
Located in Sante Fe, NM
“The hovering installations featured in this ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, "emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, sch...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Archival Pigment

American Contemporary Photo by Michael Yamaoka - Amazing Grace
Located in Paris, IDF
Digital Photograph HP Premium Satin Photo Paper with archival inks     Edition 2 of 9 Shipped in a tube 
Category

2010s Land Color Photography

Materials

Digital, Photographic Paper, Archival Ink

El Mirage, California - Landscape, Color Photography
By Richard Heeps
Located in Cambridge, GB
Photographed at El Mirage Lake, where the Southern Californian Timing Association, Land Speed Racing event, tracks in the ground from the previous days racing, adding a beauty to th...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin