Stefanie Schneider
Tropics Motor Motel I (Memories of Green)
1999

Name: Tropics Motor Motel I (Memories of Green)
Brand: Stefanie Schneider
Price: 1800 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Tropics Motor Motel I (Memories of Green) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition 1/10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on a Polaroid, Artist inventory Number 336.01 Not mounted. A German view of the American West The works of Stefanie Schneider evoke Ed Ruscha's obsession with the American experience, the richness of Georgia O'Keefe's deserts and the loneliness of Edward Hopper's haunting paintings. So how exactly did this German photographer become one of the most important artists of the American narrative of the 20th and 21st century? This theme of preservation and deterioration is a core part of Schneider's oeuvre. In an interview in October 2014 with Artnet, the artist explained how her own experiences of pain and loss inspire her. ''My work resembles my life: Love, lost and unrequited, leaves its mark in our lives as a senseless pain that has no place in the present.'' The first to use expired Polaroid film as their medium and in doing so inspired the resurrection of Polaroid film itself. Saving the last production line in the world from it's impending destruction in 2008. Schneider's subjects are often featured in apocalyptic settings: desert planes, trailer parks, oilfields, run-down motels and empty beaches, alone, or if not, not connected with one another. ''It is the tangible experience of ''absence'' that has inspired my work,'' explained Schneider. (Barnebys UK, May 3, 2017 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. Stefanie Schneider's new photographic works tell fantastic stories about her adopted Californian home. She seeks out faded American myths and distils auratically charged reality in a very personal and surprising way. She uses out-of-date Polaroid film, and the blemishes caused by the degenerated film stock, - are included in the composition in a painterly way. Exposure mistakes and low budget movie effects are combined to alienating effect. Everything shimmers and flickers before our eyes. The artist plays with the authentic poetry of the amateur, mixing strangely dreamy staging with random photochemical events. In the 16-part work Frozen, which is characterized by a strangely transcendent mood in the lighting, film-still-like pictorial clusters come together to form a mysterious story, with the artist herself as the lonely protagonist. the aesthetic is reminiscent of early Lynch films. The components of the elliptically choreographed events are scenes from an enchanted, gleaming winter landscape, together with "staged snapshots" of a pale young woman in her underskirts, who radiates the troubled reality of a mirage with her sleep walking presence. The story is presented in the manner of cinematic flashbacks or dream sequences. Stage blood and a knife are used to evoke a crime of passion whose surreal attractiveness is derived from the scenic openess of what is shown. The deliberate use of old instant picture stock establishes in a richly faceted way the ephemeral quality of vulnerability and transience within a reality that is brittle from the outset. The American Stars and Stripes, recently updated as the absolute epitome of a patriotic signifier, is the subject of the 9-part work Primary Colors (2001). Schneider's reassuringly European view, free of undue emotion, presents the Stars and Stripes motif in a strangley alienated form: she shows stills with phases of fluttering violently in the wind, even torn in some cases, and the poor film stock emphazises the fragility of the icon even more. (translated from German by Michael Robinson)

Creator:

Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)

Creation Year:

1999

Dimensions:

Height: 22.84 in (58 cm)Width: 22.05 in (56 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)

Medium:

Archival Paper,Photographic Paper,C Print,Polaroid

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

1990-1999