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Stefanie Schneider
Reflection of my Mind - including the signed monograph 'Instantdreams'
2014

Name: Reflection of my Mind - including the signed monograph 'Instantdreams'
Brand: Stefanie Schneider
Price: 870.31 AUD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.9 (35 reviews)

About the Item

Reflection of my Mind (Stage of Consciousness) - 2007 Including Stefanie Schneider's signed monograph 'Instantdreams'. 64 pages, hardcover, published by Avenso, 2014. ISBN 978-3-935971-69-0 40x38cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the original Polaroid. Signature label and Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 6987. Not mounted. catalog essay: Enchanting Images An Essay by Heidi Korf They are enchanting images. Hovering high in the air above the entrance to the studio, they radiate their brilliance. Stefanie Schneider, photographic sorceress, spins tales of another world. Impossible to look away; after a first dreamy gaze, the viewer sinks at once into a sort of trance. Summer 2013. Four of us stand in the hall of an old East Berlin factory, which recently became Stefanie’s new studio. Art is everywhere—a universe of color and light. Is this visual magnetism or pure magic? Much remains packed away from the recent move. But even through cardboard and paper, the photos emit a surreal glow; they seem to watch you, seeing deep inside. They’re intimate—beneath the skin, almost—and you feel it more than you can comprehend: they’re calling to you. Like Christmas long ago, in that timeless period between years. I suddenly remember. Sitting together as a family, entranced, watching a screen of shifting colorful slides, with our own faces appearing large in the room. A strange memory that doesn’t quite fit here. Isn’t this actually the opposite? I’ll start at the beginning. Stefanie Schneider and I have known each other since we were ten or eleven, for about three and a half decades. We both started high school in Cuxhaven back then. Cuxhaven is a small town at the mouth of the Elbe, right by the North Sea. In our youth, a strong fishy smell filled the streets when the wind blew from the east—a sign of the thriving fish processing industry. The town juts into the water with sharp angles, giving way inland to meadows, pastures, and fields. For children, it offered a lot of freedom in nature, even a bit of adventure and a hint of wilderness. In this way of life, typical for a small town, people, events, and things all had defined places. The home slide projector would produce an endless sequence of images at Christmas, each remaining visible for ten to fifteen seconds. The buzzing machine, casting the framed slides in light, was cherished by German families since the sixties as a household “Laterna Magica.” Watching wasn’t about aesthetics; it was a family ritual, affirming a shared identity. In Stefanie’s world, here in the studio, other beings reign—goddesses or graces, belonging to the realm of fluidity, open fiction. A late summer day in Berlin draws to a close. The graces/goddesses move among open colors and dormant images, sensing that something of the day remains unfulfilled... four people, memories, and art... They take their places in the corners and look on. All around lies North America, vast space, an open sky over the landscape. Mountains remain in the background, forever out of reach. The landscape stretches on, extending indefinitely. Sky over roads, between houses and cars. An incredible sky. And always, palms. The shimmering glow of a gas station at night. And sky, sky, and more sky. Here, light flows from itself. These images are both lantern and substance, blurring all boundaries. Let yourself go, and they pull you in, absorbing you until thought ceases. It’s like the beautiful lover, standing nude in the doorway, waiting for a long time. She smiles like the Sphinx. The pictures tell stories. Of mad fairies and melancholic princesses. Of dreamers self-contained. Of garish, flamboyant wig-wearing ladies, frightfully alone in their loud attire. And indeed, there is hardly a man in sight. But shouldn’t the young woman with the orange wig and white flower in her hair find her courage and free her canary first? After all, can one love a creature confined in a cage? I remember Steffi as a child. She was athletic and wild, with short blond hair, playing with the boys—and yes, getting into fights. My first vivid memory of her: It’s recess, and I come down the stairs with a crowd, and there she is, standing alert, poised, like a fierce wildcat ready for our small world. I was the opposite: shy, non-confrontational, polite. I danced ballet and wore my hair in braids. Stefanie lives part of the year in California, where she takes her photographs. And yes, you feel it—you’re in a land of possibilities, floating through a fairy-tale realm, longing only to dance through an open door into infinity. It’s a visual liberation from all burdens, a reward for relentless searching... the gateway to paradise through photography... where you lose your footing... but feel joy... hovering, gliding, even slipping. This is a trip. But is it paradise? Something about it feels ungrounded... ah yes, it almost makes you dizzy. You’re intoxicated, no longer just a viewer. Your eyes find no anchor. So, is this true happiness or its deceiving reflection? Years after our first meeting, Steffi and I found ourselves in the same advanced German class. Later, she told me it was the first course she truly enjoyed. Even so, she sometimes missed a session or two. It wasn’t intentional—time had simply slipped away from her. I remained the diligent, duty-driven student, never allowing such a lapse. But by then, I had a growing passion for literature and a critical mind. I still didn’t know Steffi well; she was so different, a stranger to me. That strangeness felt like a gulf between us. But I sensed her tendency to dream, something I knew well from within myself. And her stubbornness. Often, she was mentally in a different world. In our school environment—unwelcoming to dreamers—she had created her own world, and within it, a great freedom unknown to us. From that vantage point, she could stand firmly in her views, swim against the tide when she chose. Stefanie’s stories emerge from a depth that’s hard to name. I think of C.G. Jung’s collective unconscious, of myths, fairy tales, archetypes. They embody and illuminate us, though our poor minds can never fully unravel them. We can only approach them through feeling, best to allow ourselves to be moved, and simply receive them. The images here rise from a similar depth, piercing directly into the light. That’s why they feel so otherworldly, so disembodied, even in all their physical allure. Each image is a story, a narrative snapshot. Like dreams, Stefanie’s art is layered. It’s painted on transparent ground. And nightmares, too, as well as the grotesque, are part of this bright dream. For Stefanie, the path from the depths to the heights is not far. She’s melded the ethereal and the infernal, heaven and hell into one. Where is the center, the solid anchor of the earth? Only she knows. I would say: She is that anchor herself, stirring the great cauldron and sending her viewers flying, through cloud dances, amid shifting mirages. Stefanie’s art dissolves everything. She lets it fall into the light and implode. Her images are aware of their own ambivalence. They deny all consistency. If there are any boundaries or differences, they are merely semantic. Blazing emptiness pours over everything, almost like a true liquid. It dilutes content, etching gaps in logic and meaning. And thus, new meaning is created. Her beauty arises from nothingness, even glorifying it. She inscribes her questions onto it and pushes it beyond itself. In her photos, she lives the artist’s power to ask all questions without needing to answer. She is utterly free and uses her technical skill for any purpose. With her old Polaroid material, she befriends chance—the film itself has its flaws. This leaves no room for neuroses or the rigid straitjacket of reason. And self-censorship or the bourgeois attitudes I knew as a well-bred daughter—Steffi never knew those. Her playfulness was, and is, straightforward, even brutal. With her profound warmth, she creates what I would call “positive violence.” She managed to bring this intact from childhood and has remained herself in a way that many, myself included, might envy. But in the end, where does her art reside? In Atlantis or the land of sweet-apocalyptic stillness? Legendary images. So beautiful, so uncanny. They ignite a longing, a yearning for their eternally elusive promises. Stefanie has come a long way in pursuit of her endlessly sorrowful beauty or dreamily beautiful infinity. From a small northern German provincial town—narrow-minded, oppressively dark in winter—to the American vastness and California light.

Creator:

Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)

Creation Year:

2014

Dimensions:

Height: 15.75 in (40 cm)Width: 14.97 in (38 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)

Medium:

Archival Paper,Photographic Paper,C Print,Polaroid

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2000-2009

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Morongo Valley, CA

Reference Number:

Materials

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

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2014

About the Item