Stefanie Schneider

Mindscreen 4 - Contemporary, 21st Century, Polaroid, Figurative, Color

1999

Officer's Wives Club (29 Palms, CA), diptych - 1999 Edition of 23/25, 40x40cm each, installed 40x87cm, including gap. 2 Analog C-Prints, hand-printed by the artist, based on the 2 Polaroids. Signed on back with Certificate. Artist inventory number: 316. Mounted on Aluminum with matte UV-Protection. 29 PALMS, CA is a 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. The world depicted in the film is inspired by the photographs of German artist Stefanie Schneider in that it combines the notions of reality and fantasy and explores the resonance of both within a desert landscape and a transient culture. The characters portrayed in the film, (an actress, a singer, a DJ, a motel owner and his wife, a US army soldier, a mystic, a princess, a recluse, a movie ticket seller, two hitchhikers, a doctor, and so on), are to be played by both actors and non-actors. The story is constructed through the interpretation of real-life communications (i.e. phone calls, emails, conversations) that have taken place as the individuals depicted in the story try to make sense of events that have occurred in real life. In this sense, the story is, in part, a biography and social commentary, and the characters are the exaggerated alter egos of the individuals who play them. The structure of the plot is fairly simple. An actress working as a telemarketer is inspired by a singer who is new to town and is featured on the local radio station. The radio station runs a program for lonely hearts and a charismatic DJ uses the show to reveal the hopes and dreams of the town's “hottest women”. One night a panicked German female caller captivates the community with a painful story about a sexy “Smoke Jumper” (a mysterious and super real alpha male). Everybody in town is listening to the program and nobody is quite sure what to say. Life in general continues and we witness and explore the various interactions. The actress meets the singer and they become famous. The US Army soldier dies on his way to battle. The foreign princess discovers that the jewels she has come to sell are fake. The motel owner‘s wife has an affair with the pool boys and so on. All the while the community is united by their loyalty to the “Lonely Hearts” radio show and through the disturbing revelations of the German woman...

Buried (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 Edition of 10, 58x56cm, Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory N...

Car Wash (Stranger than Paradise) - 1999 64.6x59.5cm including the white 'Polaroid' frame. Edition 2/10. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist, mounted on Aluminum with mat...

A piece of art from the movie 'Stay' by Stefanie Schneider Stefanie created the art for both main actors Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling in the movie 'Stay' directed by Marc Forster. S...

White Trash Beautiful I (29 Palms, CA) featuring Radha Mitchell - 1999 128x125cm, Edition 3/5. Analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, based o...

Daisy in front of Trailer (Till Death do Us Part) - 2005 Edition 4/5, 48 x 47 cm. Analog C-Print, printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper, hand-printed by the artist, based on the Polaroid. Artist inventory 9250. Signature label and certificate. Not mounted. This Edition comes with the vinyl soundtrack of "Till Death Do Us Part" (directed by Stefanie Schneider), music by Daisy McCrackin. Stefanie Schneider’s Till Death Do Us Part or “There is Only the Desert for You.” BY DREW HAMMOND Stefanie Schneider’s Till Death to Us Part is a love narrative that comprises three elements: 1. A montage of still images shot and elaborated by means of her signature technique of using Polaroid formats with outdated and degraded film stock in natural light, with the resulting images rephotographed (by other means) enlarged and printed in such a way as to generate further distortions of the image. 2. Dated Super 8 film footage without a sound track and developed by the artist. 3. Recorded off-screen narration of texts written by the actors or photographic subjects, and selected by the artist. At the outset, this method presupposes a tension between still and moving image; between the conventions about the juxtaposition of such images in a moving image presentation; and, and a further tension between the work’s juxtaposition of sound and image, and the conventional relationship between sound and image that occurs in the majority of films. But Till Death Do Us Part also conduces to an implied synthesis of still and moving image by the manner in which the artist edits or cuts the work. First, she imposes a rigorous criterion of selection, whether to render a section as a still or moving image. The predominance of still images is neither an arbitrary residue of her background as a still photographer—in fact she has years of background in film projects; nor is it a capricious reaction against moving picture convention that demands more moving images than stills. Instead, the number of still images has a direct thematic relation to the fabric of the love story in the following sense. Stills, by definition, have a very different relationship to time than do moving images. The unedited moving shot occurs in real-time, and the edited moving shot, despite its artificial rendering of time, all too often affords the viewer an even greater illusion of experiencing reality as it unfolds. It is self-evident that moving images overtly mimic the temporal dynamic of reality. Frozen in time—at least overtly—still photographic images pose a radical tension with real time. This tension is all the more heightened by their “real” content, by the recording aspect of their constitution. But precisely because they seem to suspend time, they more naturally evoke a sense of the past and of its inherent nostalgia. In this way, they are often more readily evocative of other states of experience of the real, if we properly include in the real our own experience of the past through memory, and its inherent emotions. This attribute of stills is the real criterion of their selection in Til Death...

Series: Provocateur Chromogenic Print on Kodak Endura Luster Paper All available sizes and editions: 15" x 20" 22.5" x 30" 30" x 40" 45" x 60" 56" x 72" 63" x 84" Editions of 3 + 2 A...

Series: Indulgence Chromogenic Print on Kodak Endura Luster Paper All available sizes and editions: 22.5" x 30" 30" x 40" 45" x 60" 56" x 72" 63" x 84" Editions of 3 + 2 Artist Proof...

Series: Indulgence Chromogenic Print on Kodak Endura Luster Paper All available sizes and editions: 20" x 30" 30" x 40" 40" x 60" 48" x 72" 63" x 84" Editions of 3 + 2 Artist Proofs ...

Series: Mouths Chromogenic Print on Kodak Endura Luster Paper All available sizes and editions: 20" x 30" 30" x 40" 40" x 60" 48" x 72" 63" x 84" Editions of 3 + 2 Artist Proofs Tyl...

Series: Sirens Chromogenic Print on Kodak Endura Luster Paper All available sizes and editions: 20" x 30" 40" x 60" 48" x 72" 63" x 84" Editions of 3 + 2 Artist Proof The idea behi...

Series: Mouths Chromogenic Print on Kodak Endura Luster Paper All available sizes and editions: 22.5" x 30" 45" x 60" 56" x 72" 63" x 84" Editions of 3 + 2 Artist Proofs Tyler Shiel...