Los Angeles: Stefanie Schneider Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
Artforum's Critics’ Picks written by Christopher Miles
Five photos in a row: the address of a decrepit house; a thrashed US flag awash in sunlight; a pokerfaced waif staring into the distance; and both close-up and long shots of a young stud at a pay phone. Like stills from a Ralph Lauren Polo commercial transmuted into a bizarre alternate universe, Stefanie Schneider’s color prints—blowups from standard Polaroids—are all-American in a troubling way. Her images read like frames from narratives we never get. OK Coral, 2001, for example, presents a young man in a desert setting: first far in the distance; then close enough to make out the fact that he’s holding a rifle; then right in your face and looking despondent. Instead of a clearly delineated story, Schneider offers intimations, a suggestive lack of specificity reinforced by the prematurely aged look achieved by using long-expired Polaroid stock. In Untitled, 2000, she depicts a young woman watching and a man just about to slip into a building. You pick the sound track to play in your head. The number of possible endings to these stories is endless.
— Christopher Miles https://www.artforum.com/picks/stefanie-schneider-1297
