The headline-generating Frieze Los Angeles is a ritzy art fair whose global brand of marquee galleries can be counted on to bring art stars to town, but whose inclusion of more independent outfits and edgier commissioned projects is always appreciated. After canceling 2021’s edition for Covid reasons, this year it decamps from Paramount Studios to the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where it will occupy another Kulapat Yantrasast-designed pavilion, and under the new leadership of Christine Messineo.
What makes folks refer to its arrival as Frieze Week is the cohort of smaller fairs that accompanies it. Felix LA returns with a laid back Cali vibe and a foundation of local galleries and a mix of sociable enterprises by the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt. And SPRING/BREAK is back too, in a shiny new venue and with a renewed commitment to the collaborative, experimental, experiential avant-garde realness that always makes it the most surprising of the season.
Another feature of #FriezeWeek is that the gravitational pull inspires between five and five million gallery, off-site and special project receptions every night through the weekend all across the city. Check our expanded online arts calendar for highlights including openings, readings, architecture and design events, tours, studio visits, screenings, hosted conversations, performances and site-specific activations. In the meantime, plan your route from Hollywood poolside cabanas to Beverly Hills fancy tents to Culver City collaborative spaces, in search of art, discourse, deeper perspectives and giddy scene-making.
FRIEZE LOS ANGELES
A roster of 100 galleries, both local and international, including 38 Los Angeles dealers and 17 from abroad with bigger names like David Kordansky, Blum & Poe, Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, L.A. Louver Xavier Hufkens, The Box LA, Charlie James, Luis De Jesus, Tanya Bonakdar and other established and mega outfits. Newer additions to the L.A. scene appear in the special Focus section curated by Amanda Hunt, director of public programs and creative practice at the city’s Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and which highlights prograssive programs at Stanley’s, Gattopardo, Garden, In Lieu, Bel Ami, Commonwealth & Council and more. What would have been an outdoor sculpture park got canceled because of supply chain issues, but the weekend still includes plenty of on- and off-site programs and tours.
Beverly Hilton Hotel, 9900 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills; VIP Preview days: Thursday, February 17, 10am-7pm & Friday, February 18, 11am-8pm; Public Hours: Saturday, February 19, 11am-7pm & Sunday, February 20, 11am-6pm; Friday preview, $227; daily general admission $75 ($95 before 2pm); student, $35; child, $10; frieze.com.
SPRING/BREAK
An internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical and historic exhibition spaces to enliven the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, the show offers artists no-cost exhibition spaces where they express their visions within an overall theme idea. This year’s curatorial idea is HEARSAY:HERESY and promises to maintain the fair’s well-deserved reputation as the wildest and arguably most memorable, experimental and experiential of the Frieze Week fair cluster. For example, an exhibition of work by Maripol, the rather legendary artist and fashion designer; and the independent curatorial project HELL/O ARCADIA? featuring works by Haley Hughes, Emily Oliveira, Sarah Fuhrman, Zoe McGuire, Luke Silva, Katrina Jurjans, and Maria Petrovskaya based on the iconic work Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. With 50 curations activating 30,000 square feet, prepare to be wowed.
Skylight Culver City, 5880 Adams Blvd., Culver City; VIP Preview: Wednesday, February 16, 2-5pm; Opening Night party: Wednesday, February 16, 5-8pm; VIP Preview: Thursday, February 17, 11am-7pm; Regular Hours: Friday, February 18 – Sunday, February 20, 11am-7pm; $30-$150; springbreakartshow.com.
FELIX LA
A contemporary art fair modeled after the intimate hotel fair format popularized in the 1990s, takes over the Hollywood Roosevelt’s 10th and 11th floors and the cabanas surrounding the David Hockney pool. “When we introduced Felix LA we had one goal in mind: to take a step away from the overdone, traditional art fair format,” said fair co-founders Dean Valentine, Mills Morán, and Al Morán. To that end, the 60 local, national and international exhibitors represent an eclectic cross-section of self-evidently hip contemporary visions — a mood set by its screenplay-format website which is, like the fair itself, both a little weird and completely perfect.
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; VIP Preview: Thursday, February 17, 11am-7pm; Regular Hours: Friday-Saturday, February 18-19, 11am-8pm; Sunday, February 20, 11am-5pm; $40-$75; felixfair.com.
