Last Thursday, Frieze Los Angeles offered an intriguing glimpse of the staggering amount of work set for the annual art fair starting February 29 at Santa Monica Airport. With 96 galleries from 21 countries, Frieze will again deftly remain international while being a real showcase for L.A.’s increasing importance in the art world.
It was a full house at the press conference hosted at the Hammer Museum, where Frieze showcased a bit of that work from several participating galleries — about half of which have gallery spaces in Los Angeles, about a third more than last year. In her opening remarks, Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer, noted the growing role of Frieze in establishing “Los Angeles is one of the premier art cities of the world,” in combination with local initiatives like Pacific Standard Time.
Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director of Americas, noted that the reach of Frieze continues to expand beyond is fairs in L.A. and New York with the acquisition of Expo Chicago and the Armory Show in New York last summer. “That energy now makes its way back here in L.A.,” she said. Frieze is part of the IMG network, a subsidiary of Endeavor.
Messineo showed samples of the painting, sculpture, textiles, photography and more that will be on view through March 3 in its second year in Santa Monica (after stops during the fair’s earliest L.A. years on the Paramount Studios backlot and in Beverly Hills). Among those is a site-specific work by hugely influential conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, anchoring a presentation of “women's artists who have long explored the power of media, text and consumerism, and often female roles within them,” she said.
This year, participating galleries will be less spread out and share a central location in a new large tent (and surrounding grounds) designed by Kulapat Yantrasast’s architectural studio WHY that is meant to reflect “an expanded campus-like feel,” Messineo said.
One of those is BLUM Gallery, now celebrating 30 years, with spaces in Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo. It will present a group show of artists at Frieze, including the understated paintings of L.A.-based Theodora Allen and the lush paintings of Germany’s Friedrich Kunath.
New York-based gallery Casey Kaplan is showing recent pastoral still-life works and oil painting portraits by Jordan Casteel, a MacArthur Fellow.
L.A.'s David Kordansky Gallery presents the irreverent painter Sam McKinniss's latest takes on American celebrity culture.
The San Francisco-based Jenkins Johnson Gallery hosts the debut solo exhibit of Blessing Ngobeni’s paintings that examine power and abuse within the current South African socio-political system.
L.A. Louver in Venice Beach offers a survey of artist and musician Terry Allen’s work from over six decades, adjacent to his two concerts with his Panhandle Mystery Band during Frieze at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
The Focus section of the fair is always an essential stop at Frieze, focused on work presented by a dozen young U.S.-based galleries, each of which are spotlighting a single artist. Curated by Essence Harden, visual arts curator at the California African American Museum, pieces in the Focus galleries are this year all commissioned works designed explore ideas about “ecology.”
“Ecology, not in the sense of biology and the natural sciences, but the relationship between organisms, humans and their environments,” explained Harden, who noted that the participating artists are “grinding through that tension.”
Among those is Los Angeles-based Haitian photographer Widline Cadet, bringing portraits and video works that examine race, memory, immigration through the artist’s personal history. Harden described it as “very L.A.-specific because the work is actually built here and guided through this place as a lens towards Haiti and lens towards the South.”
Later in the press conference, Casey Fremont, director of the nonprofit Art Production Fund, gave a preview of several special pieces that will be visible free to anyone throughout the Santa Monica Airport campus. The works range from the deeply serious to the utterly irreverent, including a rolling piece by Pippa Garner called Hauling Ass, which Fremont described as “a fully functional backwards driving pickup truck turned artwork.”
The red pickup (complete with excessively large “truck nuts”) is the latest iteration of Garner’s 1974 backwards car, her first major conceptual vehicle. The truck will be rolling around the airport and surrounding streets throughout the fair, drawing long stares and honking horns, while inviting art lovers “to reconsider our perspectives on everyday objects,” Fremont said.
Also in motion will be Sharif Farrag’s Rat Race, a collection of modified remote-control cars with ceramic rat heads designed to be raced on a special outdoor course. Visitors are invited to participate in the contests.
At the end of the presentation Thursday, Romola Ratnam, a senior vice president at Endeavor, announced the 2024 Frieze Impact Prize has been awarded to Gary Tyler, “an artist who was wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, and spent nearly 42 years in prison in Louisiana until a sentencing was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.”
Tyler, who was imprisoned at 17, had his first solo show of textile pieces last year in Detroit. The honor from Frieze comes with a $25,000 prize. The new work from Tyler, part of his We are the Willing series, will be located beside the Focus section.
Ratnam added, “His work presents self-portraits of the artist alongside depictions of incarcerated people on death row, conveying the complexity of experiences he encountered in prison.” Fittingly, the award was given in partnership with the nonprofit Center for Art and Advocacy, established in 2022 to help find equity for artists as they navigate the criminal legal system.
February 29 (preview, by invitation only), and March 1-3 at Santa Monica Airport, frieze.com
