Ester Schneider: HOSHANA

31.8.2025-20.3.2025

Curator: Hila Cohen-Schneiderman

Ester Schneider’s solo exhibition, Hoshanah, was primarily created near the Bat Yam Museum of Art, at Ryback House, her studio in recent months. This house was previously dedicated to the work of Jewish-Ukrainian painter Issachar Ber Ryback (1897-1935), a significant figure in the Jewish avant-garde art movement.

Ryback’s works depict the Russian shtetl during the interwar period, amid pogroms and annihilation. Viewed from a cosmic perspective, it becomes evident that Ryback and Schneider create similar worlds in comparable styles through different means, forms of expression, and periods.

Schneider’s works are based on the conversion of elements within culture— from sacred to secular, from everyday spaces to the museum, from masculine to feminine—and in her works, the typically fixed schemes of life become fluid. In the round space of the Bat Yam Museum of Art, Schneider juxtaposes two worlds that are supposedly distant from and contrary to each other: one is the Tent of the Congregation—the Tabernacle of Testimony, and the other is the domestic space. However, in the exhibition, these merge like the fusion of heaven and earth.

The exhibition is constructed from several systems of painterly and sculptural works that unfold like a mandala, like a constellation of stars around a center, like tick marks on a clock. There are no human figures in the exhibition, but furniture, objects, and elements that undergo personification and appear as body parts, reorganizing themselves into strange living systems. This watery, sculptural-painterly space is saturated with color and sensuality, inviting us to immerse ourselves in it. Schneider is an astute student whose works are rich in extensive knowledge drawn partly from Jewish literature, Egyptian archetypes, Persian iniatures, and Russian Suprematism. This exhibition’s systems of symbols and materials unfold like a lexicon in the artist’s coded language.

Photograph: Elad Sarig