Ryan Schneider Murmuración

A murmuration is the phenomenon in which thousands of birds, primarily Starlings, move as one, forming ever-changing patterns in the sky, but where no single bird leads. The intelligence of the whole emerges through countless relationships, each responding to the nearest, alerting to threats and food, sharing knowledge. In this living system, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Resonant for these times of rising authoritarianism, and present throughout La Térmica itself—a space where artists, students, neighbors, children, and all visitors continually gather, exchange, and create together in real time.

The exhibition's largest sculpture, carved at La Térmica from a monumental Sapele trunk (a sacred African wood renowned for its spiritual properties), stands at the threshold — a point of arrival and reflection, inviting everyone to touch and engage with it, letting it and us become more, together.

Like a murmuration, these works join from across landscapes, moments in time, and continents — the Mojave Desert in California, where Schneider lives & works, southern France, Italy, and Andalusia — gathering into a new community of objects, materials, and stories. They invite us to slow down, expand our perspectives, and to consider our place within the larger patterns that bind us to each other and the living world.

Working in wood, stone, and bronze—carving, cutting, grinding, in a primal, almost sacred tension between hand and matter—figures, masks, and monumental forms arise through a physical dialogue of intuitive approach and practiced movement. Each work extends an ancestral gesture binding humanity to nature, memory, and spirit.

— Dana Balicki