Tracey Snelling’s miniature stage sets, featuring structures that would seem banal by daylight, but in their night time incarnations, evoke modern horror flicks—but without the actors. The small buildings in her new series, opening last week at Rena Bransten Gallery, feature desolate roadside motels and backwoods houses inspired by the cross-country road trips of her childhood.

The empty buildings, furnished with items Snelling fashions from wood, paint and found objects, are animated by electric lights, sound and miniature LCD screens that play movie clips or film stills. A sense of mystery and foreboding pervades these derelict places, taking viewers on a dark detour through the supernatural folklore of American pop culture.

Tracey Snelling: West Oakland at Night, 2013.

In New York, Nothing, a film by Snellings, continues at AC Institute. Nothing tells the story of a young woman who has resigned herself to a life with a man she doesn’t love and a dead-end job as a maid in a rundown motel. Her one form of escape is to try on the lives of the guests that are staying in the rooms she cleans. Set in the desert town of Twentynine Palms, the arid landscape becomes a character in a film that veers dangerously between reality and nightmare.

Tracey Snelling | Mystery Hour, opens Wednesday, December 19, continuing through February 15, 2014. Rena Bransten Gallery, 77 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA.

Nothing, A Film by Tracey Snelling, Continues through January 8, 2014. AC Institute, 547 West 27^th Street, #210, NY, NY.

View the KQED/Spark video about Snelling on YouTube.

Tracey Snelling was born in 1970, in Oakland, California. She received a BFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and currently lives and works in the Bay Area. Recent exhibitions include Nervous Women: Two centuries of women and their psychiatrists, Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent, Belgium and a solo show at AeroplasticsContemporary, Brussels, Belgium. Snelling’s installation, Woman on the Run, originally commissioned by Selfridges, London during Frieze 2008, has traveled to Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; 21c Museum, Louisville; Frist, Nashville; SECCA, Winston-Salem; and the Virginia MOCA, Virginia Beach. Her work has been shown in museums such asGemeentemuseum Helmond, the Netherlands; Shanghai Zendai MOMA, China; The Museum of Arts and Design, NY;Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany; El Museo de Arte de Banco de la Republica, Bogota; and Stenersen Museet, Oslo. A solo exhibition of her work will open in January at Krupic Kersting Galerie, Cologne, Germany, and is included in an exhibition at Cokkie Snoei at Art Rotterdam, opening in February.