Santa Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

View Similar Items

Stefanie Schneider - Male Nude from the 29 Palms, CA series - Polaroid, 20th Century, Color

Stefanie Schneider - Gasstation at Night (Stranger than Paradise) - 4 pieces, analog, mounted

Stefanie Schneider - Rosegarden II (Suburbia), analog, mounted - 21st Century, Polaroid, Contemporary

Stefanie Schneider - Untitled (29 Palms, CA) analog vintage print, mounted

Clare Marie Bailey - Red or Dead - Contemporary, Polaroid, Women, Figurative, Portrait, Photography

Carmen de Vos - Read till you need no more…Words - from the series Schoffie

Clare Marie Bailey - After Hours - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photograph, Figurative, Portrait

Kirsten Thys van den Audenaerde - Closing Time - Contemporary, Portrait, Women, Polaroid, 21st Century, Nude

Clare Marie Bailey - Early Morning - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photograph, Figurative, Portrait

Clare Marie Bailey - The Presence - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photograph, Figurative, Portrait

Clare Marie Bailey - Some Lapse of Time - Contemporary, Polaroid, Photograph, Figurative, Portrait

Stefanie Schneider - Blue (Stay) - 21st Century, Contemporary, Polaroid, Photography, Color

Want more images or videos?

Request additional images or videos from the seller

1 of 2

Stefanie Schneider
Santa Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

About the Item

'Santa Monica Palm Trees' (Stranger than Paradise) - 2016 20x20cm, Edition of 10, Archival C-Print, based on a Polaroid, Certificate and Signature label, Not mounted. Instantdreams Gallery presents Stefanie Schneider: 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 in accordance with 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 openheartedness 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 which 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 blackand-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! Translated by George Frederick Takis Stefanie Schneider lives and works in the California High Desert where her 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 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. 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. 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. FlashART - Sabine Dorothee Lehner (translated from German by Michael Robinson)

Creator:
Stefanie Schneider (1968, German)
Dimensions:
Height: 7.88 in (20 cm)Width: 7.88 in (20 cm)
Medium:
Photographic Paper,C Print,Polaroid
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Mint, new, perfect.
Gallery Location:
Morongo Valley, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU65238777832

Santa Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

View Similar Items

Stefanie Schneider
Santa Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

About the Item

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Stefanie Schneider
Gasstation at Night (Stranger than Paradise) - 4 pieces, analog, mounted, 2006

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie Schneider
Untitled (29 Palms, CA) analog vintage print, mounted, 1999

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie Schneider
Max by the Pool (29 Palms, CA) analog, mounted, 1999

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Stefanie Schneider
Rosegarden II (Suburbia), analog, mounted - 21st Century, Polaroid, Contemporary, 2004

1990s Contemporary Color Photography

Stefanie Schneider
Buried - Contemporary, Landscape, Figurative, expired, Polaroid, analog, 1999

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Clare Marie Bailey
Red or Dead - Contemporary, Polaroid, Women, Figurative, Portrait, Photography, 2020

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia Clodi
Paris Walks I - Framed Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph, 2018

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia Clodi
New York II - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia Clodi
New York III - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph Framed

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia Clodi
New York IV - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia Clodi
New York V - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph Framed

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Abstract Photography

Pia Clodi
Buenos Aires - Still Life Cyanotype Style Film Photographic Print Framed

Recently Viewed

Santa Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

View Similar Items

Stefanie SchneiderSanta Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

About the Item

1990s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Stefanie SchneiderGasstation at Night (Stranger than Paradise) - 4 pieces, analog, mounted, 2006

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderUntitled (29 Palms, CA) analog vintage print, mounted, 1999

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderMax by the Pool (29 Palms, CA) analog, mounted, 1999

Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

Stefanie SchneiderRosegarden II (Suburbia), analog, mounted - 21st Century, Polaroid, Contemporary, 2004

1990s Contemporary Color Photography

Stefanie SchneiderBuried - Contemporary, Landscape, Figurative, expired, Polaroid, analog, 1999

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Clare Marie BaileyRed or Dead - Contemporary, Polaroid, Women, Figurative, Portrait, Photography, 2020

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia ClodiParis Walks I - Framed Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph, 2018

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia ClodiNew York II - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia ClodiNew York III - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph Framed

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia ClodiNew York IV - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Pia ClodiNew York V - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph Framed

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Abstract Photography

Pia ClodiBuenos Aires - Still Life Cyanotype Style Film Photographic Print Framed

Recently Viewed

Stefanie Schneider
Santa Monica Palm Trees - Stranger than Paradise

Stefanie Schneider
Gasstation at Night (Stranger than Paradise) - 4 pieces, analog, mounted, 2006

Stefanie Schneider
Untitled (29 Palms, CA) analog vintage print, mounted, 1999

Stefanie Schneider
Max by the Pool (29 Palms, CA) analog, mounted, 1999

Stefanie Schneider
Rosegarden II (Suburbia), analog, mounted - 21st Century, Polaroid, Contemporary, 2004

Stefanie Schneider
Buried - Contemporary, Landscape, Figurative, expired, Polaroid, analog, 1999

Clare Marie Bailey
Red or Dead - Contemporary, Polaroid, Women, Figurative, Portrait, Photography, 2020

Pia Clodi
Paris Walks I - Framed Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph, 2018

Pia Clodi
New York II - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph

Pia Clodi
New York III - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph Framed

Pia Clodi
New York IV - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph

Pia Clodi
New York V - Contemporary Landscape Polaroid Original Photograph Framed

Pia Clodi
Buenos Aires - Still Life Cyanotype Style Film Photographic Print Framed