Rodrigo Valenzuela’s “Afterwork #17” (2021), a silver gelatin print. The artist will be on view at the Frieze art fair, but his work is available to see beforehand at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
(Rodrigo Valenzuela / Luis De Jesus Los Angeles)
Where to see 10 artists of Frieze around L.A. — ahead of the art fair
Frieze Los Angeles is rolling into town Feb. 17-20, with the contemporary art fair showcasing more than 100 international exhibitors in a tented enclosure next to the Beverly Hilton. The crowd promises to be nearly as colorful as the works for sale, studded with artists, collectors, celebrities, fashionistas and, perhaps, the occasional attendee in a cowboy hat with antlers and a fuzzy tail dangling from his bottom. (Hello, Frieze 2020.)
All of which may sound exciting for thrill-seekers or, for the COVID-cautious, terrifying.
The art fair will enforce COVID-safety protocols; but for anyone looking to get their Frieze fix on early, either to avoid the crowds or to get familiar with the artists before viewing or buying, here’s where you can see some of the artists in exhibitions currently up around Los Angeles.
Showing Places
(©The Artist’s Estate. From L.A. Louver, Venice, CA, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.)
L.A. Louver
Venice Arts
Leon Kossoff. The late British artist’s work will be on view at L.A. Louver’s Frieze booth, a presentation of paintings and drawings called “Masterworks From Los Angeles Collections.” But why wait? The Venice gallery is currently showing a retrospective of the artist’s work, “Leon Kossoff: A Life in Painting,” through late March. In Kossoff’s Expressionist reworkings, Times critic Christopher Knight points out that “it’s often hard to tell whether we are witnessing a joyful bacchanal or a deadly massacre, a revelry or a riot.” The exhibition, part of a three-city tour, includes more than 20 works — the largest gallery presentation of the artist’s work in more than 20 years — and features figurative work, landscapes and two “transcriptions,” or interpretations, of 17th century works by Nicolas Poussin, an artist whose work Kossoff studied at London’s National Gallery. The show is a good primer to the upcoming J. Paul Getty exhibition “Poussin and the Dance,” opening Feb 15.
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Rodrigo Valenzuala’s “Afterwork #1” (2021), a silver gelatin print, is on view right now at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
(From the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.)
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
Downtown L.A. Arts
Rodrigo Valenzuela. Industry, automation and displacement, along with workers’ struggles for unionization, are longtime interests of Valenzuela, whose photography and cast concrete sculptures will be on view at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles’ booth. Get familiar with the L.A.-based Chilean artist’s photography first, however, in “New Works for a Post-Worker’s World,” the downtown L.A. gallery’s first solo presentation of his work. Valenzuela is an assistant professor at UCLA, and his black and white images in the current show, the gallery writes, “suggest the roaring steel mills of the past, quickly abandoned once outdated, while also offering a retro futuristic vision in which workers and machines devised a better plan than their mutually assured futility.”
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Glen Wilson’s “Convergence (MarchAprilMay),” 2020, installed at NeueHouse Bradbury as part of “Mystic Truths.”
(From the artist and Various Small Fires.)
NeueHouse Bradbury
Downtown L.A. Arts
Anna Sew Hoy and Glen Wilson. Various Small Fires’ booth at Frieze will include a group exhibition of artists who are working globally and making sculpture, photography and paintings about living cross-culturally. Two of those artists, Hoy and Wilson, are both L.A. based and have separate work on view right now in a group exhibition at NeueHouse Bradbury called “Mystic Truths.” That group exhibition, consisting of 14 artists from around the U.S., features paintings, sculpture, photography and video work exploring surrealism, contrast and opposing truths. NeueHouse is a private membership club and working space but visitors to the exhibition can make a reservation at the bar, which is accessible to the public. And the iconic building where NeueHouse is located, the Bradbury, is an architectural landmark of L.A. that’s worth the visit.
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Kehinde Wiley’s 2018 portrait of President Barack Obama, for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Other work by the artist is now on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of the “Black American Portraits” exhibition.
(Photo: Mark Gulezian/NPG)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Mid-Wilshire Arts
Kehinde Wiley, Calida Rawles, Catherine Opie at LACMA. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s substantial and stunning “Black American Portraits” exhibition, up through April 17, features 140 works by 110 artists. Several of the artists in this exhibition will be showing work at Frieze, through different galleries. Wiley — whose 2018 portrait of former President Obama was also on view at LACMA in a separate exhibition that included Amy Sherald’s portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama — will be part of Roberts Projects’ group exhibition at Frieze. The gallery will present a new portrait by Wiley. The L.A. based Rawles will be on view at Various Small Fires’ booth, and Opie will be part of Regen Projects’ Frieze presentation. But see them all first at LACMA — the exhibition is one of the museum’s finest in a long while.
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Catherine Opie’s “monument/monumental,” 2020, pigment prints, at the Broad museum as part of “Since Unveiling: Selected Acquisitions of a Decade.”
(From Catherine Opie; photo by Joshua White.)
The Broad
Downtown L.A. Arts
Elliott Hundley and Lari Pittman at the Broad — along with Opie. Regen Projects is also presenting work by Hundley and Pittman at Frieze. Both, along with Opie — all important L.A. artists — are part of the Broad museum’s “Since Unveiling: Selected Acquisitions of a Decade.” The exhibition features 53 works by 27 artists — including Mark Bradford, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker and Kerry James Marshall — and highlights how the museum’s collection of postwar and contemporary art has grown over the last 10 years.
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Zeinab Saleh’s “A lovers meeting disallowed,” (2022), center, at Château Shatto as part of “Softest place (on earth) [Extended mix].”
(From the artist and Château Shatto, Los Angeles. Photo: Ed Mumford.)
Château Shatto
Downtown L.A. Arts
Zeinab Saleh. The London-based Kenyan artist’s charcoal drawings over acrylic paint — works on paper — will be part of a group exhibition at Château Shatto’s Frieze booth, which will also include paintings by the Melbourne-based Helen Johnson and the Marfa, Texas-based Van Hanos as well as a large-scale, silicon sculpture by the New York-based Aria Dean. But the downtown L.A. gallery is currently exhibiting Saleh’s first solo show in the U.S., “Softest place (on earth) [Extended mix].” It features 18 works, both paintings and charcoal drawings, all observational abstracts.
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