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Stefanie Schneider
Roy's (California Badlands) - Contemporary, 21st Century, Polaroid, Landscape

2010

About the Item

Roys (California Badlands) - 2010 20x24cm, Edition of 10, digital C-Print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 10944. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's Artist statement: Desolation and solitude are two adjectives that I would use to describe my Polaroid photographs, another would be the Japanese term 'Wabi-Sabi. The simplicity of 'flawed beauty' comes from the expired film I use to create a reflection of love and loneliness.
 My dream of accepting so called 'imperfection' is in fact a a realizing of a different world view for which there's no way back. The shiny, perfect point of view is crumbling and has been for a long time. Formally, my work was called blurry, broken or even botched but they fail in the test of acceptance that all things are imperfect. It's a seismic shift for some but in this age where the cracks are no longer hidden, the affirmation of reality is still difficult. 
But that's so depressing right? To acknowledge that the dream is actually turning into a nightmare. It's easier to deny than to utter the truth of defeat. (ruin). 
That we are all finite is irrefutable but we just don't want to believe it. That's how organized religion managed to take the hold of the masses but that too is waning these days. Proving that everything has it's time, even God. 
I began expressing myself through photography before the digital age we currently inhabit and certainly predating 'instagram'. Understanding the skill of analog film which requires that conditions be right before the click of the shutter is in stark contrast to todays, post production photography.
 The celebration of imperfection reconnects us to the real world where we normally mask our flaws.
I chose Polaroid film because it portrays color like candy making even the broken an expression of endearment. The combination of the color and the blemishes of expired Polaroid analog film gave me a sense of inner peace with my surroundings. It just fit. Nothing had portrayed my vision so symbolically. Frankly, It's liberating.
The quirks, oddities or the perfectly imperfect uniqueness of my work relate to our own life blemishes and somehow make them ok or even remarkable. Honoring that value of imperfection makes it permissible to be. 
One might put the world into two camps, the ones who appreciate the beauty of imperfection and the ones who don't. Let me warn you now, those who attempt to see and are successful, can never return. To see that perspective is to have gone into a twilight zone of understanding where your former self is altered forever and the once revered is no longer possibly seen with beauty.
 
Allowing space and time for the magic moment to manifest and capturing that enchantment. 
I use my senses and current affairs to plot that path of serendipity especially when it's a mark of turbulence. The upheaval of balance is the key for chance and allows all unknown forces to contribute to the moment.
This is what it means to me.
The first rule in art is that there are no rules. 
I look inside myself, ground that emotion and imagine it in a dream. 
It's the only thing that make any sense to me.
 Dreams are the foundation of emotion and the link to our sub-conscience. The link between my work and your sub-conscience is that you're allowed to insert yourself into the story itself. 
I try to clarify my nightly dreams subjectively with a cup of nostalgia in a bowl of emotions and sprinkle it generously with sex. It is there, the fountain of our instincts. Born in Germany in 1968, photographer Schneider divides her time between Berlin and Los Angeles and became naturalized American in 2020. Her process begins in the American West, in locations such as the planes and deserts of Southern California, where she photographs her subjects. In Berlin, Schneider develops and enlarges her works in a self designed and built analog color laboratory.
  • Creator:
    Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
  • Creation Year:
    2010
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 7.88 in (20 cm)Width: 9.45 in (24 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    50x60cm, Edition of 10, not mountedPrice: $1,279
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Morongo Valley, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU652310096702

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Indian Summer III (The Last Picture Show)
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Indian Summer III (The Last Picture Show) - 2005 20x20cm, Edition of 10, plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print print, based on the Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label Artist Inventory No 892. Not mounted. Stefanie Schneider's scintillating situations take place in the American West. Situated on the verge of an elusive super-reality, her photographic sequences provide the ambience for loosely woven story lines and a cast of phantasmic characters. Schneider works with the chemical mutations of expired Polaroid film stock. Chemical explosions of color spreading across the surfaces undermine the photograph's commitment to reality and induce her characters into trance-like dream scapes. Like flickering sequences of old road movies Schneider's images seem to evaporate before conclusions can be made - their ephemeral reality manifesting in subtle gestures and mysterious motives. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. Stefanie Schneider received her MFA in Communication Design at the Folkwang Schule Essen, Germany. Her work has been shown at the Museum for Photography, Braunschweig, Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin, the Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt, the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Museum für Moderne Kunst Passau, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Foto -Triennale Esslingen., Bombay Beach Biennale 2018 / 2019. “It was Stefanie Schneider, who inspired me to start the company THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT after seeing her work, which seems to achieve the possible from the impossible, creating the finest of art out of the most basic of mediums and materials. Indeed, after that one day, I was so impressed with her photography that I realized Polaroid film could not be allowed to disappear. Being at the precise moment in time where the world was about to lose Polaroid, I seized the moment and have put all my efforts and passion into saving Polaroid film. For that, I thank Stefanie Schneider almost exclusively, who played a bigger role than anyone in saving this American symbol of photography.” –Florian Kaps, March 8th 2010 (“Doc” Dr. Florian Kaps, founder of “The Impossible Project”) What makes Stefanie Schneider’s work so unique is that it’s immediately recognizable. Perfect ‘wabi-sabi’ in appearance and content. Dream like, colorful with depth and vision. From start to finish, a truly self made artist with a distinctively female perspective. Exhibitions Selected (selected) 2018 Participation Bombay Beach Biennale, Bombay Beach, USA (G) March Available to All, Rough Play Projects - Site Specific, Joshou Tree, USA (G) curated by Deborah Martin with Adam Berg, Doron Gazit, Kellan Barnebey, Chris Sanchez, Aili Schmelzt 2017 BLICKFELD Analoge Fotografie, Kommunale Galerie Steglitz-Zehlendorf (G) (catalog), (upcoming)
 Rosegallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica (G) Magie des Moments, Kunstverein Bad Homburg Artlantis, Bad Homburg (G) 2016 
Instantdreams, Instantdreams Gallery, Berlin 

(S) 2015
 Desert Voices, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Pamela Littky The Ballery in Heat, The Ballery, Berlin (G) 
Blue Nudes, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) 

 2014

 Summer Show, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) 6 Finalists, Saatchi Gallery London (G) 
Instantdreams, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (S)
Grand Opening, De Re Gallery, Los Angeles (G) with Banksy, Andy Warhol, Alison Bignon, Sophie Dickens, Victor Gingembre and others
 2013 
Heather's Dream, Short, nominated for the German Short Film Award 2013 (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis)
Images For Images (Artists fir Tichy), GASK - Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region,  Kutná Hora, Czech Republic, (G) with Richard Prince, Nan Golding, Shirana Shahbazi, Sophie Calle, Martin Kippenberger, Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese & others (catalog) 
The Girl behind the White Picket Fence, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (S)
 Heather's Dream, Short, German Competition Short Film Festival Oberhausen 
Multimedia Presentation with Artist Stefanie Schneider, Palms Springs Art Museum, Annenberg Theater
 The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, (G) with Ansel Adams, Bruce Charlesworth, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Charles and Ray Eames, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Oppenheim, Andy Warhol and others, (catalog)
 Road Atlas - Straßenfotografie, DZ Bank Collection: Kunsthalle Erfurt (Spring), Art Foyer DZ Bank, Frankfurt/Main, (G) with Helen Levitt, Pieter Hugo, Nobuyoshi Araki, Pietro Donzelli, and others (catalog)  2012
 Stranger Than Paradise, Christian Hohmenn Fine Art, Palms Desert, (S) Stefanie Schneider, Gallery at Cliff Lede Vineyards, Napa Valley, CA, (S) Bienale Art Auction 2012, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, (G), with Ai Weiwei, John Baldessari, Christo, Ed Ruscha, Christopher Russell, and others. MUSES, Galerie Catherine et André Hug, Paris, France (G) with Kourtney Roy and Eric Weeks Polaroid (IM)POSSIBLE - THE WESTLICHT COLLECTION, NRW Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, Düsseldorf (G), (catalog) Road Atlas - Straßenfotografie, DZ Bank Collection: Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk, Cottbus, (G), (catalog) Studio Scholorship, Centro Cultural Andratx, Mallorca, May 2012 Selling Sex, ShowStudio Gallery, London (G) with Cortney Andrews, Una Burke, Liz Cohen, Inge Jacobsen Stranger Than Paradise, Scott White Contemporary, San Diego, (S) 

2011 
Kunst zu verlosen !  // Art to raffle off !, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, (G) with Monica Bonvicini, Tim Eitel...
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