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Stefanie Schneider
Angie (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Portrait

2004

$600
£445.53
€523.25
CA$834.77
A$934.61
CHF 490.04
MX$11,547.64
NOK 6,174.87
SEK 5,828.83
DKK 3,904.12
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About the Item

Angie (Suburbia) featuring Aussie actress Radha Michell - 2004 38x50cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid. Signature label with Certificate. 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? Stefanie Schneider was born and raised in Germany but lives and works in Southern California. Exploring the American dream and capturing it with Polaroid instant film. 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 that reflect a part of the narrators life told from her perspective. Often about love, communication. sexuality and relationships. 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 dreamscapes. 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 yet they also explore the relationship with the medium and the viewer. The wabi-sabi 'ness' of Schneider's work can not be denied or ignored. It's a step of acceptance of 'flaws', gaps and distortions. Missing pieces of the puzzle. The artist flaunts, uses and exposes the unknown using expired Polaroid instant film intentionally. Presents it. What you do with that is up to you. That missing part of the picture is for you to include yourself, you fill it in with yourself. That might be critical that it's there at all, missing and missing the entire point all together or by filling in the unknown with their own imagination. Even their own memories which then integrates the viewer and artist as one with limitless potential. Stefanie Schneider's new photographic works tell fantastic stories about her adopted Californian home. She seeks out faded American myths and distills a 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 openness 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 strangely alienated form: she shows stills with phases of fluttering violently in the wind, even torn in some cases, and the expired film stock emphasizes the fragility of the icon even more. FlashART - Sabine Dorothee Lehner (translated from German by Michael Robinson)
  • Creator:
    Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
  • Creation Year:
    2004
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 14.97 in (38 cm)Width: 19.69 in (50 cm)Depth: 0.04 in (1 mm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    20x26cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Price: $380
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Morongo Valley, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU652313360922

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Angie (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography, Portrait
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Angie (Suburbia) - 2004, 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1697. Not mounted. The project "Suburbia" was shot on the set of Marc Forster's first feature film 'Everything put Together' with Radha Mitchell, Michelle Hicks, Megan Mullally, Catherine Lloyd Burns, Matt Malloy and others. Suburbs collectively, or the people who live in them Suburb { a district, especially a residential one, on the edge of a city or large town } synonyms [Outer edge , Fringes, Periphery, Limits, Outer reaches, Environs ] Sunday in suburbia, a summer's day heavy with heat, hardly a soul to be seen. As a result, the motifs of Stefanie Schneider's “Suburbia” cycle – put together in California, in the very west of the USA – are virtually inconspicuous.Schneider's camera encircles an idyllic American setting, capturing a garden practically empty of people. Surrounded by a white picket fence, flowers and trees bloom profusely in the blazing sunlight. The day is empty and quiet like only a Sunday can be. The grass is perfectly cut, the garden well tended, the inhabitants oblivious to everything and lethargic. An instant is seized, revealing the tragedy of an average, unsuccessful, middle class life. The scene is familiar from countless movies and American literature; the perfect façade of an American ideal, which seems to conceal the horror of daily life. In David Lynch's „Blue Velvet“ the film begins with the camera rolling over a similar setting: the view over the fence, the painstakingly neatly cut lawn, ending with a close-up: a cut-off ear covered with feasting ants. Stefanie Schneider overdoes it, she exaggerates: this is confirmed by the irritating colourfulness as well as the vehemence of the motifs. Emptiness stands in stark contrast to the beauty of the blooming roses or the lush growth of the trees. The fenced, idyllic summer scene appears vacant; unused chairs surround a table, the grill untouched and clean, no object out of place. It is only the inhabitants who appear curiously lost. Schneider shows them in the middle of their saturated lives, in well-tended averageness, which can only be endured with a Martini on ice, on hand before lunch. In her opinion the scenes are banal, yet one becomes witness to great intimacy. Schneider's „Suburbia“ cycle lives from the interplay of the motifs, and tells a story with the same flavour as American author Raymond Carver...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Jean 2 (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography, Portrait
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Jean II (Suburbia) - 2004 20x25cm, Edition of 10 plus 2 Artist Proofs. Archival C-Print, based on the Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory No. 1687. Not mounted. The project "Suburbia" was shot on the set of Marc Forster's first feature film 'Everything put Together' with Radha Mitchell, Michelle Hicks, Megan Mullally, Catherine Lloyd Burns, Matt Malloy and others. Suburbs collectively, or the people who live in them Suburb { a district, especially a residential one, on the edge of a city or large town } synonyms [Outer edge , Fringes, Periphery, Limits, Outer reaches, Environs ] Sunday in suburbia, a summer's day heavy with heat, hardly a soul to be seen. As a result, the motifs of Stefanie Schneider's “Suburbia” cycle – put together in California, in the very west of the USA – are virtually inconspicuous.Schneider's camera encircles an idyllic American setting, capturing a garden practically empty of people. Surrounded by a white picket fence, flowers and trees bloom profusely in the blazing sunlight. The day is empty and quiet like only a Sunday can be. The grass is perfectly cut, the garden well tended, the inhabitants oblivious to everything and lethargic. An instant is seized, revealing the tragedy of an average, unsuccessful, middle class life. The scene is familiar from countless movies and American literature; the perfect façade of an American ideal, which seems to conceal the horror of daily life. In David Lynch's „Blue Velvet“ the film begins with the camera rolling over a similar setting: the view over the fence, the painstakingly neatly cut lawn, ending with a close-up: a cut-off ear covered with feasting ants. Stefanie Schneider overdoes it, she exaggerates: this is confirmed by the irritating colourfulness as well as the vehemence of the motifs. Emptiness stands in stark contrast to the beauty of the blooming roses or the lush growth of the trees. The fenced, idyllic summer scene appears vacant; unused chairs surround a table, the grill untouched and clean, no object out of place. It is only the inhabitants who appear curiously lost. Schneider shows them in the middle of their saturated lives, in well-tended averageness, which can only be endured with a Martini on ice, on hand before lunch. In her opinion the scenes are banal, yet one becomes witness to great intimacy. Schneider's „Suburbia“ cycle lives from the interplay of the motifs, and tells a story with the same flavour as American author Raymond Carver...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Jean 3 (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography, Portrait
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Jean III (Suburbia) 2004, 20x24cm, Edition of 1/10, digital C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signature label with Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 1688.01. Not mounted. This project ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Lonesome (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Lonesome (Suburbia) - 2004 40x50cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 1742. Not mounted. In an ag...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

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

Judith (Suburbia) Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Judith (Suburbia) - 2004 50x60cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on a Polaroid, Signed on verso with Certificate, Artist inventory number: 1698. Not mounted. Stefanie S...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Nude Photography

Materials

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

Judith (Suburbia) - Contemporary, Polaroid, Analog, Color, Photography, Portrait
By Stefanie Schneider
Located in Morongo Valley, CA
Judith (Suburbia) 2004 20x24cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print based on the Polaroid not mounted, Signed on verso with Certificate. Artist Inventory No. 1673.01. This project ...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

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

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