Contemporary Art Exhibitions
Located in Ventura, CA and home to 4 galleries Vita Art Center’s exhibits bring museum quality contemporary art to Ventura.
Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday, 12–4pm. Free to the public.
Please check exhibit dates, the gallery is closed for install in between exhibits.
FLORAL STATES
On exhibit May 16 - August 2, 2026
Gallery Hours: Saturday/Sunday 12-4pm
Exhibiting Artists Include: Penelope Gottlieb, Dan McCleary, John Nava, Janet Neuwalder, Astrid Preston
This exhibition brings together a range of artistic responses to flowers as both subject and symbol. While flowers are often associated with beauty, they also suggest resilience, renewal, and persistence. In a time marked by uncertainty, these works consider what it means to turn toward forms that offer both visual pleasure and deeper meaning.
Each artist approaches the floral theme through a distinct lens, revealing the many ways flowers can hold strength, fragility, joy, and presence at once. Together, the exhibition makes space for beauty not as escape, but as a way of remaining attentive to vitality and possibility in difficult times.
PHILIP ARGENT
On exhibit May 16 - August 2, 2026
Gallery Hours: Saturday/Sunday 12-4pm
Philip Argent’s paintings have been exhibited nationally at venues such as Deitch Projects, NY, the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA and the Cranbrook Art Museum, MI, and internationally at galleries and museums in Turin, Zurich, Tenerife, Kwangju, Graz and Berlin. In Fall 2003 his work was featured in ‘Crossroads’, a three-person exhibit at the Mannheim Kunstverein, Germany. Argent received an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1994. He is represented by Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica and Galerie Jette Rudolph, Berlin.
FORMS OF CONTAINMENT
On exhibit May 16 - August 2, 2026
Gallery Hours: Saturday/Sunday 12-4pm
Exhibiting Artists Include: Mark Churchill, Travis Kennedy, Wyn Matthews, Ben Provo, Jenchi Wu.
Forms of Containment brings together ceramic vases that explore the vessel as both functional object and sculptural form. Presented alongside a concurrent exhibition in the Main Gallery centered on flowers, the exhibition considers the relationship between floral imagery and the handmade forms designed to hold and frame it.
The works on view highlight the vase through form, surface, proportion, and presence. Together, they invite attention to the vessel not only as a container, but as an expressive object in its own right.
GWYNN MURRILL
Panthers
The Oasis at Vita Art Center
Experience the power and grace of Gwynn Murrill’s large-scale cast bronze panthers, on view at The Oasis at Vita Art Center streamlined forms that capture the essence of movement, Murrill’s felines invite close looking and quiet contemplation as they prowl across the outdoor setting.