Ritual to the Sun: If the Body is a Map and Art is a Portal
Joins us at a poco art archive for the opening of Ritual to the Sun: If the Body is a Map and Art is a Portal, a group exhibition exploring the intersection of artistic practice and ecological reverence! On view from March 8 to April 19, 2025, the exhibition brings together works by Charles Arnoldi, Charles Liu, Jian-Jun Zhang, Jinseok Choi, Kenneth Morehouse, KEF!, Max Roeg, Nancy Evans, Wang Yiming, and Xiangxi Zhang.
Location: Culver City (To maintain an intimate setting, viewing and opening are by appointment only. Please RSVP.)
“Ritual to the Sun” explores art as both devotion and navigation, revealing how creative practice bridges body and spirit, nature and creation. The exhibition reflects on the body as a vessel of lived experience—marked by history, labor, and transformation—while artists, like ancient civilizations aligning with celestial cycles, map their own relationship to time, place, and materiality through gestures of making and meaning. In this context, art becomes a portal—an entryway into deeper ecological consciousness and a call to attune ourselves to the urgent realities of environmental precarity.
Inspired by Martha Graham’s Acts of Light (1981) and poetry of Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)—both pioneers rooted in feminist discourse—this exhibition examines the interplay of movement, light, gender, and agency. Through the vision of curator Ann Shi and participating artists—many resonating with the ethos of the California Light and Space Movement—the exhibition reimagines choreography, poetry, and the labor-intensive processes of visual art as interconnected forms of reciprocity. Here, creation is not depletion but regeneration—an offering to the natural world and the unseen forces that shape our collective experience.
By bringing together works that engage with elemental forces—light, air, water, sound, earth, cosmos—this exhibition showcases diverse interactions with the natural world, spanning preservation to poetic reinvention. Jian-Jun Zhang’s “Rubbing Sun” traces the sun’s movement at Venice Beach through water, ink, and stone, capturing light’s ephemerality and permanence. Part 1 (2011) uses water on xuan paper to mark the sun’s blaze, a fleeting yet eternal exchange between fire and water; Part 2 (2011) transforms these traces into ink rubbings on stone, grounding light in matter; Part 3 (2014), a 25-minute video, extends this meditation through time. Shown together for the first time, the series becomes a ritual of imprinting time itself—where sun, artist, and elements merge in a poetic cycle of transformation.
Charles Arnoldi's groundbreaking series of treestick paintings was inspired by his discovery of a burned orchard in Malibu during his youth, where charred trees stood stark against the skyline. KEF!'s fluid lines and intricate patterns stem from his synesthetic experiences, visually interpreting sound movements and paying homage to Kandinsky's practices. Nancy Evans' paintings evoke water's fluidity and transformative qualities, inviting contemplation on life's cyclical nature, reminiscent of textural strokes in classical Chinese ink paintings. Jinseok Choi's works explore ritualistic practices prevalent in Korean indigenous culture, drawing parallels to folklore traditions where masks were used during performances are burned afterward; his practice continues this lineage by collecting sawdust to create incense sticks that burn during exhibitions, offering a ritualistic experience. Wang Yiming's land art, recreated on a smaller scale within this intimate space, offers perspectives akin to those of an alien or deity, fostering dialogue between human creativity and the cosmic womb. Zhang Xiangxi's labor-intensive installations highlight the realities of an artist's life, emphasizing the physicality of artistic practice that often involves everyday jobs and hard labor, mirroring the toil and resilience imprinted on their bodies. Charles Liu's art reflects a harmonious blend of classical ink wash techniques in a timeless discourse, encompassing his multifaceted roles as an artist, curator, art critic, and teacher in the arts. Alongside the visual artists, abstract and sculptural works from two designers Kenneth Morehouse and Max Roeg are on view to also blend functionality while evoking the shifting hues of natural landscapes. Morehouse’s practice employs concrete—a traditionally cold and rigid material—yet through warm, soft, and fluid movements, which prompts reflections on the material’s time-based and dual nature; ecological harmony and ritualistic living take form in Roeg’s contemporary ceramic design.
Through intimate bodily rituals, abstracted landscapes, or explorations of material sustainability, these artists invite us to reconsider our relationship with the environment, recognizing the body as a microcosm of our world. As Starhawk elucidates in "Dreaming the Dark" (1982), ritual and spirituality can serve as tools for resistance, enabling the reclamation of interconnectedness and the re-enchantment of the world. This exhibition calls for an awakening—an embodied, sensory, and intuitive response to the fragile and sacred ecologies surrounding us—recognizing art as an offering, a form of ecological reciprocity, and a catalyst for transformation.
An interactive healing performance by BenBen Lei and an artist panel will happen with date TBD—but stay tuned!
About the Curator:
Ann Shi is an independent curator, art advisor, archivist, and USPAP-compliant art appraiser specializing in 20th-century Chinese paintings. Born into a family of artists and collectors in classical ink paintings, music and drama, Shi has a deep appreciation for multidisciplinary art forms that connect time, mediums, and realms. She holds a BA and MMath with Honours in Mathematics from Oxford University and an MA in Art Business from Sotheby's Institute of Art, and was formerly a risk officer in the hedge funds over her six-year banking career. Her curatorial approach often explores the intersectionality on various accounts, from classical Chinese ink art, literati lineage, and contemporary expressions, shifting between indigenous and external perspectives within her cultural identity. She contests the notion of Asian art with an aim to gradually dissolve physical and metaphorical borders of races, genders and geography. (Instagram: @annonymous_cynist)
About the Space:
a poco art archive is an independent creator’s space and curatorial incubator in Culver City, dedicated to showcasing unconventional, thought-provoking works and fostering critical dialogue across contemporary art, art history, and archival practices. As an intimate space that defies conventionality, we aim to transform the act of archiving into a curatorial project and artistic labor—where ideas, processes, and dialogues are continuously cultivated, challenging static notions of “archive” while embracing the fluidity of creative evolution. (Instagram: @a.poco.art.collective)