The Girl Behind The White Picket Fence (60m, Germany) dir. by Stefanie Schneider. An artists world of movie stills, 'The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence' is a succession of Polaroid film stills. One after another, this film takes this to the limit and still delivers. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, flowing with the rhythm of the music or in the energy the film portrays. Gaps keeps the viewer paying close attention but this is no Instagram lark, this is real analog Polaroid film. This is a one off, a complete window into an artists mind as she sees the world. Sunny, hot, in love, open spaces evoking freedom but also banishment. This film started out with a vision of grand collectiveness with all participants coming from Schneider's time in Hollywood ranging from directors to actors, producers to agents and writers to weirdos. The American dream was alive and well in this motley group who fell in love with Schneider's idea to capture a story about love on Polaroid film. The center of this story is the 'Lonely Hearts Radio Station' DJ, who talks to the searching broken hearted in the southern Californian desert. A sad young girl calls in to better understand what is going on which results in an unexpected chain of events. Main characters: Hans, the mystic played by the veteran actor Udo Kier. Heather's a young girl who's lost her parents played by Heather Megan Christie. Radio station DJ played by the comic Steve Marshall. Hank is the local garbage man played by Kyle Larson.


ABOUT LIGHT ASSEMBLY
Light Assembly is both a film festival like no other, and a mass-scale showcase of video art and architecture. In the last decade, visual artists such as Miranda July, Steve McQueen and Julian Schnabel have legitimized the crossover from visual art to filmmaking. Light Assembly is the first-ever film festival dedicated to assisting artists in that crossover between art and film. Light Assembly is also a pilot video art and architecture exposition program unique in the world. Conceived as a beta of Time Zones Chicago, planned for premier in late Summer of 2013, the goal of Light Assembly is to combine large-scale video art projection with the citywide canvas of Miami Beach and mainland Miami’s modern architectural marvels and historic landmarks.

ADDITIONAL EXHIBIT of PHOTOGRAPHS with UDO KIER

Information
http://www.light-assembly.com

In December we host our first exhibition by German-born Stefanie Schneider, known for her dreamlike and painterly photographs expressing the mirage-like aestheticism in the California lifestyle.

After moving to Los Angeles in the late ‘90s Schneider has been showing us her outsider’s view of the area and its sunlit stark character through the classic shades of Polaroid and muted hues indigenous to the region and its atmospheres.

Inspired by an early love of 1970s films depicting American living and an eye for the light in the West, she concocts a vast array of pictorial narratives hinting at something just below the surface of her raw and quirky ingénues and heat wave drenched heroes. Viewers waffle between a sense of being invited in to view the spectacle and simultaneously acting as voyeur.

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. Schneider’s works are represented in public collections as well as being represented in prestigious private collections internationally.

Most recently, she has directed a movie with actor and fellow valley resident Udo Kier, which will be shown in Miami this year in a film festival during the Art Basel Week.

EXHIBITION

>> September 13  -  November 4  |   2011

NEW WORKS BY ROLLO ARTISTS
ROLLO CONTEMPORARY ART, LONDON
Press Launch and Private View, Tuesday, July 5, 5pm

a group exhibition witH Jessica Lagunas, Frank Bowling RA, Helen Carmel Benigson (Princess Belsize Dollar), Andrew Hollis, Sarah Lederman, Nadine Feinson, Angela Reilly, Stefanie Schneider

ROLLO Contemporary Art is delighted to announce details of the forthcoming group exhibition: NEW, which will present a selection of latest work by ROLLO artists.

  

Jessica Lagunas                         vvvvvvvvvb bbb bb v     Stefanie Schneider 

In mythischen Bildern amerikanischer Landschaften erarbeitet die seit Jahren in Kalifornien tätige deutsche Fotografin Stefanie Schneider facettenreiche, fotogra-fische Zyklen. Die entstehenden Erzählungen rekurrieren auf Bilder der Traumfa- brik Hollywood. Indem die Künstlerin ihre Darstellungen jedoch durch die Verwen- dung von abgelaufenem Polaroid-Material stört, das zu Farbveränderungen, Fehlern und Leerstellen innerhalb der Aufnahmen führt, thematisiert sie die Ambi- valenz des sprichwörtlichen »American Dream«. Stefanie Schneider entfaltet gleichsam ein Roadmovie mit ihrer lakonischen Bilderreise durch die Verheißun- gen und Abgründe einer Wüstenlandschaft, in der die Protagonisten an der Schnittstelle von Fotografie und Film agieren. Ihre sich im Licht auflösenden, poetischen Fotografien, die unscharf wie Traumsequenzen aufscheinen, erzeu- gen spannungsvolle Gefühle zwischen Vertrautheit und Fremdheit, Klischee und Realität.
 
Gallery Information
{ Galerie Robert Drees, Weidendamm 15, 30167 Hannover } Opening Hours Wednesday 10.00h-18.00h, Thursday 14.00h-18.30h, Friday 10.00h-18.30h, Saturday 11.00h-14.00h | Contact Phone + 49 511-980 58 28 | E-mail info@galerie-robert-drees.de | Site www.galerie-robert-drees.de

....In René’s Dream, issues of role reversal take place as the cowgirl on her horse undermines the male stereotype of Richard Prince’s ‘Marlboro Country’. This photo-work along with several others by Schneider, continue to undermine the focus of the male gaze, for her women are increasingly autonomous and subversive. They challenge the male role of sexual predator, often taking the lead and undermining masculine role play, trading on male fears that their desires can be so easily attained. That she does this by working through archetypal male conventions of American culture, is not the least of the accomplishments in her work. What we are confronted with frequently is of an idyll turned sour, the filmic clichés that Hollywood and American television dramas have promoted for fifty years. The citing of this in the Romantic West, where so many of the male clichés
were generated, only adds to the diminishing sense of substance once attributed to these iconic American fabrications. And, that she is able to do this through photographic images rather than film, undercuts the dominance espoused by time-based film. Film feigns to be seamless though we know it is not. Film operates with a story board and setting in which scenes are elaborately arranged and pre-planned. Schneider has thus been able to generate a genre of fragmentary events, the assemblage of a story without a storyboard. But these post-narratological stories require another component, and that component is the viewer who must bring his own interpretation as to what is taking place. If this can be considered the upside of her work, the downside is that she never positions herself by giving a personal opinion as to the events that are taking place in her photographs. But, perhaps, this is nothing more than her use of the operation of chance dictates....

Frank Pictures Gallery is proud to present renowned photographer Stefanie Schneider’s show “Instant Dreams” from October 16th to November 11th, with an artist’s reception on Sunday, October 24th. This is Schneider’s second exhibition with gallerist Laurie Frank, as she introduced Schneider’s first US solo show at her Still/Moving venue in 1998. 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 is known for using expired Polaroid instant film material to achieve an effect of washed-out colors and random artifacts from the deprecation of the chemicals. These serendipitous chemical color explosions spread across the surfaces to 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. Combined with her preferred choice of location, 29 Palms, CA, (which served as location and title to one of her books and films), and the mounting of sequential images in a panel, the photographs evoke the impression of faded film stills. Schneider's images refuse to succumb to reality, they keep alive the confusions of dream, desire, fact, and fiction. Schneider shot the album cover for the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Desecration Smile" single and all the photography for Cyndi Lauper's "Bring Ya to the Brink" album as well as Daisy McCracken's album covers.

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. Previously she has shown in the U.S. with Susanne Vielmetter at LA Projects, Art Haus LA. She lives and works between the California desert and Berlin.

view website: http://frankpicturesgallery.com/

EXHIBITION

>> SEPTEMBER 18  -  OCTOBER 30  |   2010 

INSTANT DREAMS
30works Gallery, Cologne, Germany
Vernissage September 18  /  20.00h

Opening Hours
Mo-Fr 15-20.00h, Sa 11-20.00h
or by appointment 

Antwerpener Str. 42 - 50672 Köln - 0221/5700250 
view website: www.30works.de

 

For its fifth edition, SHOW OFF 2010 becomes the SOLO SHOW art fair of Paris. Show OFF will take place October 21-24, 2010 during Paris’ Contemporary Art Week and will be set in a lumious, elegant tent in the heart of Paris, a few steps away from the Grand Palais and the banks of the Champs Elysees. Painting, photography, drawing, sculpture, video, and installation; all media will be represented in a unique format highly favorable to participating artists. 

The Catherine and André Hug Gallery seeks to discover young talent and promote them internationally. The gallery works largely with artists exploring the times, and techniques of their time. The German Photographer Stefanie Schneider will offer photographic portraits of the American West exploring the fragility of the America dream. In her series Schneider tests the limits of the Polaroid and all its chromatic aberrations as part of a carefully crafted motif of halos and holes representative of a second reality.

La galerie Catherine et André Hug pour objectif de découvrir de jeunes talents et d’en faire la promotion internationale. Le choix de la galerie sur des artistes exploitant les technique de leurs temps et des thèmes évocateurs proches des préoccupations actuelles.

La photographe allemande Stefanie Schneider est l’artiste présenteée cette par la galerie. Au travers de photographies de l’ouest des Etats-Unis, Stefanie Schneider fait transparaître la fragilité du rêve américain. Dans ses séries photographiques où elle tient souvant le premier rôle, l’utilisation exclusive du matériel Polaroid périmé provoquent des aberrations chromatiques, des trous et des halos, qui se posent sur les motifs arrangés avec soin comme uns seconde réalité.

view website: www.showoffparis.fr
 

....In René’s Dream, issues of role reversal take place as the cowgirl on her horse undermines the male stereotype of Richard Prince’s ‘Marlboro Country’. This photo-work along with several others by Schneider, continue to undermine the focus of the male gaze, for her women are increasingly autonomous and subversive. They challenge the male role of sexual predator, often taking the lead and undermining masculine role play, trading on male fears that their desires can be so easily attained. That she does this by working through archetypal male conventions of American culture, is not the least of the accomplishments in her work. What we are confronted with frequently is of an idyll turned sour, the filmic clichés that Hollywood and American television dramas have promoted for fifty years. The citing of this in the Romantic West, where so many of the male clichés were generated, only adds to the diminishing sense of substance once attributed to these iconic American fabrications. And, that she is able to do this through photographic images rather than film, undercuts the dominance espoused by time-based film. Film feigns to be seamless though we know it is not. Film operates with a story board and setting in which scenes are elaborately arranged and pre-planned. Schneider has thus been able to generate a genre of fragmentary events, the assemblage of a story without a storyboard. But these post-narratological stories require another component, and that component is the viewer who must bring his own interpretation as to what is taking place. If this can be considered the upside of her work, the downside is that she never positions herself by giving a personal opinion as to the events that are taking place in her photographs. But, perhaps, this is nothing more than her use of the operation of chance dictates....

Marc Gisbourne, “Stranger Than Paradise”

private history turned into an intimate mythology of elemental fantasies where reality is perceived through a veil of psychedelic memories and unconscious projections. such is a collection of passions and dreams, an uncanny diary of ephemeral narratives and mental intensities in Stefanie Schneider’s painterly photographs where subjectivity of an ontological doubt uses a poetics of pastische as a vehicle for an intertextual journey towards the truth and the authenticity of primary emotions. here time is immersed in a nostalgic suspense of oneiric dimension, a sort of ambiguous coma of silence and comfort, and open space embraces a psychotic landscape of solitude and accidental pleasure. fetishisized surface of extreme feelings gives a stage for an unsolicited promise of unconditional love and unlimited freedom, a promise framed by sensual tension between fulfillment and expectation.

       Adam Budak, Kunsthaus Graz, Oct 2005

"Till death do us part", an episode of the "29 Palms, CA" project. A film shot on Polaroid stills combined with Super 8 film sequences.

Till Death Do Us Part is the story of two young lovers, lonely souls escaping the abuse of reality into each other. Imagine a stranger suddenly in your path, you can just be silent with, and you feel you have known her forever. This is the experience of Cristal (Daisy McCrackin) and Margarita (Austen Tate), that begins when Cristal picks her up hitchhiking on a lonely dessert road. A runaway from a cruel older brother and a broken family, Margarita is searching on the edge of the shadows for a home. Cristal was also a lonely child and already dangerously close to vanishing when she finds Margarita. For her it is the begging of life. When she finds Margarita, she finds herself, she feels for the first time and discovers that she is not invisible after all. The childlike, roadside life they make together is a dream that they truly believe will last forever, and with the naive joy of beginners, they dive in, never sensing danger. When two lost souls become one and share everything, do they loose themselves further or do they become whole at last? When a girl has no home, no anchor, can she combine thrive with another? Once a human heart wakes up from isolation for the first time, enchanted by a reflection in love's mirror, can the dreamer fall asleep again, or must she wander searching to find it again forever?

An artistic triumph for Schneider, this piece floats deeper into her exploration of the colors of the human psyche, separation, relationship, androgyny and the fringes of social reality.

The Californian desert light and the vintage colours of Polaroid create a unfor-getable atmosphere in the abandoned trailer park.

Austen Tate gives Margarita her voice in poetry and Daisy McCrackin gives Cristal her sound in music.

in cooperation with Nathan Köstlin
and EFFIGIES, PARIS

A Stefanie Schneider exhibition introducing works by Daisy McCrackin, Camille Waldorf & Max Sharam.

29 PALMS, CA is a feature film / art piece that explores and chronicles the dreams and fantasies of a group of individuals who live in a trailer community in the Californian desert.

Please join us for the opening reception on December 11, 2009 at 19.30 h

Opening hours: Daily 19.00 - 2.00 h 
Public Transport U2, U6 STADTMITTE
PH +49 (0)30 20 87 99 97 / +49 (0)30 20 87 99 98 FAX +49 (0)30 76 77 32 07
email: artbar71@ googlemail.com

please visit: www.twentyninepalms.ca   [ the 29 Palms, CA project ]

EXHIBITION

>> SEPTEMBER 25 - NOVEMBER 30  |   2009  extended till JAN 2010

LANDSCAPES & ICONS - images emblématiques
Galerie Thierry Librati, Paris, France

Informations pratiques
Vernissage jeudi 24 septembre 2008 de 17h à 23h, Exposition du 25 septembre au 30 novembre 2009 { Galerie Thierry Librati 30, rue de Lille, 75007 Paris } Horaires mardi au samedi de 14h30 à 19h00 | Contact Thierry Librati Telephone 01 40 20 40 84 | E-mail contact@librati.com | Site www.librati.com

“(Stefanie's photos) reinforce the randomness of life: the frisson that happens when you pass by someone you may have met in a dream; the way relationships begin and end and the way they occasionally, miraculously, work out...She suggests that all we can do is point out basic truth, marvel at our brain’s architecture, revel in the found beauty…We can gawk at the Polaroid’s chemical burns that resemble starbursts in the day sky in the same way we can acknowledge without understanding someone’s fleeting interest in a stranger. In other words, we can relate."

EXHIBITION

>> MARCH 20 - JUNE 14  |   2009

29 PALMS, CA
The Moravian Gallery in Brno / Museum of Applied Arts              CZECH REPUBLIC

curator Jirí Pátek,
Vernissage March 19  / 17.00h

EXHIBITION

>> MARCH 06 - APRIL 19  |   2009

TRUE LIES
Kunsthaus Essen, Essen, Germany

EXHIBITION

>> JULY - SEPTEMBER  |   2008

SIDEWINDER
Cover SALZBURGER FESTSPIELE 2008

Zu den Salzburger Sommerfestspielen lieferte Stefanie Schneider Motive aus der Serie „Sidewinder“ als Bildvorlagen für das Festspielplakat und das Programmheft, um hiermit das Motto der Festspiele „Denn stark wie die Liebe ist der Tod“ zu  veranschaulichen. Dies ist Anlass für die Galerie Robert Drees, ab 16. Juli eine Ausstellung in Salzburg in der Galerie am Mozartplatz durchzuführen. In Kooperation mit den Salzburger Festspielen und dem Kulturamt der Stadt Salzburg zeigen wir dort bis zum 29. August einige Werkgruppen von Stefanie Schneider.

EXHIBITION

>> MAY 4 - APRIL 30   |   2008  

SIDEWINDER 
Galerie Robert Drees, Hannover

 

SEITWÄRTS by Gusztáv Hámos, 04. April 2008
Zur Einführung Stefanie Schneiders Ausstellung „Sidewinder“

EXHIBITION

>> FEBRUARY 12 - MARCH 15  |   2008

29 palms, ca
first viewing 01 / 08

opening reception february 11 18.00 h - 22.00 h
GALERIE SPESSHARDT & KLEIN, 10969 BERLIN (kochstrasse 55 - 58)
for information please contact: info@twentyninepalms.ca

also note: 29 Palms, CA @ the atrium
filmhaus potsdamer strasse 2 selected by BERLINALE / FORUM
february 7 - february 17 2008

press text

29 Palms, CA is a project positioned between film and art. In this project the German photo artist, Stefanie Schneider, explores and documents the dreams and fantasies of a group of people living in a trailer park community in the California desert.

An essential part of this project is the artistic, conceptual and filmic collaboration between actors, musicians, photo artists, directors etc. Udo kier is not only a performer, but also a producer. Marc Forster is responsible for directing the dialogues, and special effects in the post production. Radha Mitchell is writing the script. Sophie Huber, Max Sharam, Daisy McCrackin, JD Rudometkin, Zoe Bicat and Camille Waldorf are all writing the music, developing their characters and acting as performers. All participants are developing and acting out their characters. Steve Marshall is a performer as well as the DJ of the “Lonely Hearts Radio Show”. Sabine Dehnel will build the DJ booth of the radio station as a model, which will then be emulated as the DJ room for the film.

The vision of a feature-length film is just as important in this as all the single, small stages or fragments, which are necessary for this film: Just as life and the circumstances of our social reality, the project 29 Palms, CA is in a state of constant change and development. The film is a biography and a social commentary, whose characters act as the alter egos of those individuals who portray them. In the course of the art project the different performers have contributed ideas, stories, scenes, monologues, poems, music and films, so that the basic principle of the concept, namely a collaboration of different perspectives and the pooling of different fragments and depictions, bestows a lively rhythm upon the film. Each character will introduce his or her character in the form of a fictional or semi-fictional diary on the website, which was specially developed for this project. The website hereby plays the role of an independent world from which the film project and the radio show emerge. The characters take influence on what will be seen in the film through their descriptions. Through the radio show connections between the individual performers will be established.

The whole film is generated from Polaroid pictures, which Stefanie Schneider is editing into the film. The fact that the films are expired leads to the surreal distortions and colorings. The pictures appear fleeting and taut, blurry. Stefanie Schneider paints with her Polaroid films. She clearly alludes to the ambivalence between imagination and portrayal, between fiction and reality, and leaves it to the viewer to form his/her own picture, to remain in a surreal or real space. The motive of the desert also supports the dichotomy between imagination and reality, at any moment breaking the clearness of a definite ascription, which is definitely not found in her work. All the more clear it becomes that the characters are living in their own lost world, but that life itself can change their perspective on their world. The place in which the performers of 29 Palms, CA are living, is more an idea or a reflection of a place than a place per definition itself. The light and the desert landscape are painting an imaginary reality, which the characters find themselves exposed to. Memories, fantasies and reality merge.

The project can be seen at the Berlinale / Forum in the Atrium of the Gossip Bar (Filmhaus Potsdamer Platz) and the gallery Spesshardt & Klein. For the first time the complexity of this grand art project, which positioned between film and fine arts, as well as a link or interface in between various media, will be exhibited.

download exhibition pdf

>> more info

EXHIBITION

>> SEPTEMBER 21 - SEPTEMBER 27  |   2006

STAY / STRANGER THAN PARADISE

private party, 21. september 2006
nd-projects  { GALERIE SEE, Seefeldstrasse 301a, CH-8008 zürich }




Der erfolgreiche Schweizer Hollywood-Regisseur Marc Forster („Monster’s Ball“, „Finding Neverland“, "Quantum of Solace"), hat sich für seinen Film „Stay“ von Stefanie Schneiders Bildern nicht nur inspirieren lassen, sondern sie spielen – neben Ewan McGregor und Naomi Watts - eine Hauptrolle: sowohl als „Kunst im Film“, als auch als Look einer Traum- und Gegenwelt.

Bei Stefanie Schneider erinnere ich mich nie an Details des Bildes, sondern
nur an das Ganze. Zwischen Wirklichkeit und Traum wird bei Ihr ein dritter Weg
beschritten, der beides vereint und mich wahrhaftig von künstlerischer, visueller
Freiheit beflügelt.

EXHIBITION

>> JULY 7 - NOVEMBER 26  |   2006

ARTWALK AMSTERDAM



SYNC! – The Cinematic Eye

A summer’s evening... You’re taking a stroll through your own neighbour- hood, lost in thought. Suddenly you spot a back-lit photo filling a display window; it seems oddly familiar. As you approach it, you realize that it’s a life-size still taken from a famous film scene. You’re engrossed. A humdrum spot down the road has been lit up too. What’s happening, you think, what have I missed? Every single detail impresses itself upon your retina, until your attention shifts to another illuminated image in the distance...

An international visual arts project.

SYNC! The trailer - Between the 7th of July and the 26th of November 2006, the SYNC! team organized the exhibition SIDEWINDER, a solo by rising star Stefanie
Schneider, who will also participate in the larger, 2007 edition of SYNC!. It served to put the concept to the test, and to work on business connections. The exhibition was much appreciated by the audience. 

EXHIBITION

>> MARCH 02 - APRIL 06  |   2002

Solo Exhibition Stefanie Schneider in der Galerie Michael Zink

EXHIBITION

>> JULY 10 - AUGUST 04  |   2001

ROUGH CUTS
SUSANNE VIELMETTER
LOS ANGELES PROJECTS

address now:
5795 West Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232
phone 323.933-2117, fax 323.933-3997

LOS ANGELES CRITIC'S PICK. ARTFORUM

—Christopher Miles

Night on Earth - Fotografie und Videokunst

Photographs and videoworks by: Henry Bond, Adam Chodzko, Alain Declercq, David Deutsch, Serge de Waha, Willie Doherty, Alicia Framis, Hatty Lee, Seamus Nicolson, Matthew McCaslin, Sophy Rickett, Stefanie Schneider

The night, the time of darkness, is the topic of exhibition Night on Earth. Curated by Ralf Christofori, curator of the internationally acclaimed exhibition Colour Me Blind!, Night on Earth triggers memories of Jim Jarmusch’s unforgettable homage to night in the 20th Century.