Images courtesy the artist, CHART, New York, and CANDICE MADEY, New York

DEEP LIKE, a two-venue exhibition co-presented by CHART and CANDICE MADEY, features new works by Carrie Schneider. Created through a process that allows for serendipity and failures, they represent a shift in the artist’s practice.

Photographs shown in the exhibition originate from the technical experiment of building a camera. Using acrylic sheets, industrial grade plastic, and a 300mm Rodenstock lens, Schneider managed to fabricate her own device. She then exposed existing images directly to photographic paper, exploring a procedure that opens up possibilities for both errors and discoveries as the work develops. This marks a break from her earlier method, which typically involves prior research and defined strategies for image-making.

The resulting prints are reminiscent of early photography that often carries a mystical aura, with their subjects appearing on the verge of being recognizable. In Hotter Cotter, a shadowed hand stretches out against a patch of eerily fluorescent blue. In Full Ashtray, tainted in vibrant colors, the face of a girl with a cigarette collaged over her mouth is partially visible. Meanwhile, in contrast to documentary photographs, Schneider’s images represent innovative interactions with a contemporary visual language incorporating influences from social media, pop culture, and allusions to art historical references. RRT (Recycled Rosemarie Trockel), for instance, shows a sketch in courtesy of the German conceptual artist along with the tip of a finger holding it in place.

Through her works, Schneider is interested in questioning the supposed ability of the camera to capture with exactitude as well as the tension between photography’s potential for both documentation and abstraction. Often working intuitively in the hours before sunrise, she engages in a diaristic process – similar to automatic writing – through which she repeats motifs until they become fully exhausted and a new exemplar appears. She adopts multiple exposures, light bleeds, and obstructions to compose abstractions that embody an eclectic mix of images. These may range from works of art that have been formative to the artist’s ideas, nicknamed her “poetic blazen” by Schneider, and pictures collected from personal life, such as screenshots of a friend’s social media page. In fact, the title of the exhibition is inspired by a culture of hashtags.

While “LIKE” recalls the familiar function that aids communication with friends and transports affection through a computer or phone screen, Schneider attempts to go deeper. Leaving marks of her hand on the photographs by way of her unique process, she traces the desire for connection and the relational value of art amplified by what has been a year of isolation for many.

Carrie Schneider: DEEP LIKE is on view at CHART and CANDICE MADEY through to July 2, 2021.