A new online exhibition showcases contemporary Chinese and American artists at Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in Montecito, Calif.

Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition (through August 15) showcases the work of 25 artists involved in a cross-cultural program promoting creative collaboration.

What is the place of the spiritual in contemporary life, particularly in highly materialistic—and increasingly secular—cultures, like the United States and China? This is the central question of Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition, the product of a gathering of North American art professors with their Chinese counterparts in June 2018 in China.

Visiting artists’ enclaves and cultural sites in Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai, the professors considered issues of art, contemporary society, spirituality, and their role as culture makers, critics, and seers. The works in the resulting exhibition represent this encounter, its conversations, and what was summoned by the artists’ interactions.

Matter + Spirit presents a body of art that reflects on the perennial tensions between the material and the spiritual in human life and in society.