​RiTA HOUSE PRESENTS: COMMON SENSE
perception as a creative act

​Group Art Show
Opening Reception Thursday June 5, 6-9pm

​This exhibition features 13 artists who bring materiality into dialogue with sensory experience, using the body as a portal for connection and awareness. Through sculpture, painting, photography, and textiles, their work activates the senses as tools to anchor into reality and recognize perception as a creative act itself. These artists also harness the subconscious, allowing it to emerge alongside the rational mind. Disrupting habit and autopilot, their work channels intuition, dreams, and collective consciousness, offering unexpected paths of connection and understanding. These artists acknowledge our innate animal nature while striving to find common ground in the social realm, to overcome the isolation of everyday life and pervasive sense of disconnectedness through play and intuitive exploration. Here is a utopian faith in the capacity of art to expand and alter perception and consciousness, to arouse empathy in the viewer and create a community of like minded people.

​Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies.
We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence --Alan Watts

​FEATURED ARTISTS
Rachel Burnstein, Lila de Magalhaes, Carmen Escobar Whitaker, Phillip Gladkov, Chuck Graef, Ellen Khansefid, Tae Lee, Dani Manning, Kosta Potamianos, Kate Saubestre, mica scallion-ford, Irina Skornyakova, Anya Wild

​As an extension of the exhibition Common Sense, join us at Rita House for a series of interactive Sense Activations: Exquisite Corpse Games on Tuesday, June 12 (6–8pm), Proprioception on June 19 (6–8pm), and Sound on June 26 (6–8pm), culminating in a Closing Reception: Taste on July 13 from 4–6pm.

About The Curator:
Anya Wild (Anya Dikareva) explores the body as a site of communication, transformation, and play through wearable sculptures and performative actions. Drawing from her experiences as a Ukrainian refugee and shaped by cultural dislocation, she creates hybrid forms using fiber techniques, repurposed materials, and nonsensical gestures to evoke self-discovery beyond language. Rooted in craft, performance, and material experimentation, her work challenges assumptions of civilized life while inviting participants into new sensory and embodied states of being.

​Rita House is a dynamic, multi-use space where people of all generations come to work, create, film, and host events including art exhibitions, immersive theatre, panels and screenings. Centrally located in a stunning 1926 Spanish Colonial building by The Grove minutes away from West Hollywood, Rita House bridges centuries of creative history with modern innovation. Originally built in 1929 as a Prop Design Studio for film and television, the building later became a violin factory producing instruments for schools nationwide. In 1967, it was purchased by award-winning costume designer Rita Riggs, who worked with legends like Alfred Hitchcock and Norman Lear. Rita established her design studio here and pioneered a unique model of creative coworking, cultivating a community of design professionals who shared her commitment to excellence and collaboration.

​Today, architects and founders Tash Rahbar and Scott Strumwasser continue Rita’s legacy. After operating their architectural practice in the space for over three decades, they lovingly restored the nearly 100-year-old building and transformed it into the sanctuary for creative exploration it is today—carrying forward Rita’s spirit of innovation and community. In 2024, Rita House expanded its creative capabilities with a full-service production center, including professional content creation facilities and a podcasting studio developed in partnership with Operation Podcast.

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​SPECIAL EVENTS

Sense Activations:

​Exquisite Corpse Games: Tuesday June 12, 6–8pm)

​Proprioception: June 19, 6–8pm

​Sound: June 26, 6–8pm

​Closing Reception: July 13, 4–6pm Taste