ANN LISLEGAARD.

GALLERIA RAUCCI/SANTAMARIA

A vortex in a mirror of water: A whirlpool--the expression of a quiet and sensual power--pierces the northern European landscape Ann Lislegaard photographed for Vertigo (all works 2000). Calm reigns throughout, except for the intense pressure that the vortex creates around its core. The surface of the water is untroubled and changes direction, drawn into the cavity of the eddy. The clear, even, diffuse light evokes the touch of dry, penetrating cold against our skin, skimming over us, or caves eroded by water, with rounded interiors and walls of varying thickness, some of them transparent. Delicate filigrees of string--"membranes," as Schneider calls them--ate threaded through the openings. They recall the stitches left after surgery, though here they don't close: On the contrary, they emphasize the opening. These strings also dangle loose from the ceiling of the gallery, separating the "architectural models" from a group of photographs, Untitled, 1999.

Schneider's work has always involved a critique of cliches. By deforming the dolls' heads, for instance, she destroyed the standardized mold, the schema of proportion (big forehead, little features) and substituted an unexpected image: the cave as a representation of the womb, a symbol of protection and security. Now, when Schneider returns to the cave theme and isolates it, the direct reference to the earlier deconstruction seems at first to be missing. But the choice of colors admits no doubt concerning its persistence. Two years ago Schneider participated in a show at the Neuen Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, Berlin, called "Rosa fur Jungs/Hellblau fur Madchen" (Pink for boys/light blue for girls). In taking up these colors again, she connects the architectural models to the question of identity. This theme emerges even more strongly in the photos, rephotographed documentary images of a museum in Melbourne, in which we see a woman posing, apparently functioning either as an indication of scale or in orde r to animate the severe architecture. This counterpoints the evocation, in the architectural models, of interior spaces as protective zones--protection also against ill-suited interpellations of identity--and thereby relativizes Schneider's use of the term "architecture," because her models in no way suggest living spaces hut rather serve as places for the imagination.

Birthday-Table, 2000, a large table covered with free-form pink wax objects, can perhaps also be understood in this way. Among the irregular pink forms one discerns a crooked birthday cake and a massive package, but also a finger and a fist. The monotony of the sickly pink disperses into a highly personal miscellany. Before turning to art Schneider studied archaeology, and with her caves and on Birthday-Table it seems as if she wishes to excavate layers of meaning, to explore something hidden.