About the Gallery
Established in 2015, The Schechter Gallery is a nexus between the breadth of Jewish knowledge and the expressive power of the arts. The incantatory phrase Abracadabra, which has its roots in Aramaic (אברא כדיברא), is the guiding expression of our artistic practices; we explore big ideas that unravel and shape the fabric of our lives through art. We strive to examine otherness/difference, and serve as a creative platform for artists from all walks of life to thrive and make their voices heard.
The active and involved role art plays in the reality of our lives is foregrounded in the gallery’s activities and programs. This founding principle is communicated through the gallery’s cultivation of community ties, and complemented by its events, such as lectures, workshops, and artists’ roundtables, all based on the Talmudic methodology of group learning.
Alongside its quarterly exhibition cycle, the gallery hosts a range of interdisciplinary programs for artists that work at the intersection of knowledge, art, and spirit.
Past Exhibits 2023/24
The Poison Path
The Jewish people have a long relationship with poison, its dangers and potential benefits. As part of the exhibit, a group of four artists will explore the complexity of the subject of poison, its botanical, chemical, social and political implications. The program will examine Jewish textual sources, as well as works on the history of medicine and botany.
The exhibit will also be open to other researchers and colleagues (scientists, technology entrepreneurs and cultural figures), creating a multidisciplinary meeting point, where science, research, Judaism, spirit and art will merge. In addition, there will be various events that will be recorded as podcasts for the general public, alongside brewing workshops and talks on the field of medicinal plants.
RADIO AWE
Following October 7th and the outbreak of the war, the Gallery hosted an extraordinary exhibit, “Radio Awe.” Its goal was to assemble a universal library of prayers and heartfelt pleas transcending religion, culture, and language with round-the-clock global broadcasts. This reservoir of prayers forms a chorus of wishes and yearnings and is digitally transmitted to anyone willing to listen—anywhere and at all times.
Anyone was able to record a prayer through the digital platform or a visit to the gallery and join a collective radio station for human hopes, intentions, blessings, and thanks. The project was designed to speak to people with the desire to connect, regardless of race, religion, gender, sex, language, age, or culture.
RADIO AWE was mounted as a sound installation, and will continue operating afterwards as a permanent digital program.
Mycelium
In recent years, fungi have gained increasing international recognition. Not only have they become celebrated for their chemical attributes but have been serving as a model for inspiration and learning for a wide range of practitioners: scientists, artists and therapists who have been working with fungi and forming an attentive and interactive relationship with them.
In her new artwork, Sharon Glazberg explores the relationship between art and its viewers, audiences, and communities. She works with mycelia, the bodies of fungi, an underground nervous system composed of white threads (hyphae) that transfer food and information to the dierent parts of the system. Glazberg creates a space of art and medicine where human and fungus meet and develop relationships of patient and therapist, feeder and nutriment.
In collaboration with the mycelium, the gallery space was transformed into a habitat for edible and medicinal mushrooms, cared for by the artist and by a selected group of experts from various disciplines, such as therapy, creativity, philosophy, art, and music, as well as specialists dealing with the relationship between body and spirit. They will hold conceptual and practical sessions revolving around therapy, healing, art, and ritual.
Upcoming Exhibits 2024/25
September – November 2024: Niv Gafni – Spectacle.
The gallery will be hosting an exhibit of the work of Niv Gafni, a sound artist, which will deal with the concept of vision and the biblical “burning bush” as an experience and a human encounter with the unknown. The exhibit will be a light and sound installation that will place viewers in a mirage, and present this manipulated reality as a middle ground between a deceptive image and a miracle.
January – March 2025: Bruno Schulz’s Dream Machine
This exhibit is a collaboration with the Polish Institute. It will focus on one of the most important surrealist Jewish writers of the early 20th century, who perished in the Holocaust and left behind an astonishing collection of fictional texts, dealing with different states of consciousness.
The exhibition will connect Schulz’s ideas relating to our consciousness to “social dreaming,” a scientific theory developed by Gordon Lawrence in 1982 in London. Various events and meetings relating to dreams will be held as part of the exhibit. Sleep researchers will create a real sleep laboratory and data will be collected about the sleep states of the visitors.
