Carrie Schneider: 12 x 12
@ Museum of Contemporary Art
220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
On view through Sunday, December 27th
Working in ambiguously narrative photography and video, Carrie Schneider mines the complexities of relationships — both romantic and familial — nature, and the self. Her images, which often depict herself and her brother, are quietly mysterious and anxiety-provoking as they seductively probe what is considered “appropriate” behavior. Beyond this, the figures can be considered a doubled self which acts as a point of entry for psychological and emotional negotiations.
In the series Derelict Self, the artist explores the idea that mimicry can be a way to both gain and lose a sense of oneself. Images from her Fallen Women series appropriate cultural icons from Hollywood and an American folk song, substituting the male lover with a surrogate from nature; while Las Bebidas updates Velázquez’s complex system of gazes, “propositioning the dive bar as the present-day royal court.”
Inspired by her residencies in Helsinki, the natural landscape is often employed as the setting for her work, in addition to the interiors of bars, which also act as a site for a heightened awareness of being, specifically in regards to romantic and otherwise complicated and hierarchical relationships. Citing David Lynch and Finnish filmmakers such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Salla Tykkä as important influences, Schneider is undertaking her first major short film project this summer while in Helsinki and plans to debut it in her UBS 12 x 12 exhibition. The film continues her investigation of physical representations of relationships between people incorporating elements of the uncanny and the doubled-self.
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