Frieze Frames — A Vibe Check from LA's Art Week
Written by Eddie Brannan by Nicole MillerThe juggernaut that is Frieze rolled into LA last week, and as usual, the main event, held at the Santa Monica airport as in previous years, brought with it a flotilla of smaller fairs, pop-ups and openings. The buzz of what has now become a quasi-official art week was felt city-wide, from the Westside to the Hollywood Hills, from DTLA to the artist enclaves to the east. But it was a subdued Los Angeles that welcomed the annual extravaganza this year. The toll of the recent fires on the city was unprecedented, with two neighborhoods—Pacific Palisades and Altadena—almost completely razed. Everyone knows someone who lost absolutely everything in the fires. Homes are gone, studios are gone, collections are gone, archives are gone—things that can never be replaced. But the city stands strong, and Angelenos will build new homes and studios, make new art, and forge new stories. All the shows recognized the impact of recent events and offered fundraising for wildfire relief, whether at designated booths where artworks were available by artist donation, or by providing QR codes linking directly to various fundraisers. Grief And Hope is one such organization, committed to raising funds for impacted artists and art workers, and there are many other groups and endeavors working towards the same end.
Aside from Frieze itself, we took the city and the art world’s temperature at other events around LA—Felix Art Fair at the renowned Roosevelt Hotel, Future Fair Tigertail in the hills of Brentwood, and The Art of Oscar group art show, at AF Projects in Hollywood. Felix kicked the week off on Wednesday, and the action was in the rooms and in particular the cabanas around the pool, where a wealth of galleries and artists showed. Out-of-towners were happy to find clear blue skies and temperatures in the 70s in LA, and took advantage of the poolside setting to socialize and acclimatize, as well as take in the works on show. Among our favorites were Meegan Barnes’ whimsical ceramic depictions of LA landmarks at One Trick Pony.
Thursday was opening day at Frieze, and the four huge main rooms were full. As well as the wealth of art on show (Sydney Cain, represented by Casey Kaplan, was the stand-out among stand-outs), the people-watching was similarly top-flight. LA is a city that doesn’t typically like to dress up unless there are red carpets involved, so it’s refreshing for Angelenos to see one another in daytime finery.
Talking of red carpets, Friday found us at The Art Of Oscar, a group show organized by The Hollywood Reporter to coordinate with the awards and curated by Michael Slenske, where a range of artists showed work that reimagined the famous statuette. Ellen Jong’s Oscarella, an ink-black four-foot-tall Oscar fountain projecting a tutu of water into a surrounding pool, caught visitors’ attention.
Topping the most-extravagant-setting list was Future Perfect’s presentation that occupied the whole of a theatrically lit white mansion hidden behind high, high hedges under Runyon Canyon, where we saw the sculptural ceramic pieces of LGS Studio and ran into co-founders Tom Renaud and Noel Hennessy.
The weekend meant multiple parties, including a garden gathering at the home of M + B Gallery’s Benjamin Trigano, and a jam-packed pool party at the West Adams home of Alexis Borges, president of Next Models.
And lastly on Saturday we visited Future Fair’s pop-up group show in the Brentwood hills, where among other works we saw wonderful wood intarsia renditions of prosaic objects such as cassette mix tapes by Michael Buhler-Rose (represented by New Discretions) while a chef-prepared dinner was served to invited guests as they watched the sun set over the hills of LA, and over Frieze week 2025.
