Freeze Frame: Vignettes of Frieze LA 2024
Los Angeles continues to stake its claim as leader of the west coast art world
Now in its fifth iteration, Frieze Los Angeles seems to have found its footing, ensconced in the local art scene while drawing in and interacting with global gallery powerhouses. This delicate balance is reflected in the fair’s now permanent location at the Santa Monica Airport, home to the private jets of Hollywood moguls as well as community restaurants and artists’ studios. This high-low aesthetic is seen in luxury sponsors like Breguet watches, which cost more than most luxury cars, contrasted with a tent outside the entrance which housed wares of local non-profit art collectives.
Gone were the Instagram-friendly, self-involved mirrored artworks (except the obligatory Time Magazine cover piece), and instead the visitor actually had to interact and grapple with the artworks on the wall and on the floor. And more than last year even was a strong presence of black and brown artists, Brazilian galleries, textiles, and all things Korean. The vibrancy of color and form seemed to pop off the walls, even as the more ‘showy’ aspects of years past were slightly toned down. Frieze has entered middle age.
Discovering ‘New’ Artists
This year’s Frieze was the most accessible yet, featuring one sprawling, tripartite tent instead of last year’s two disjointed and distantly placed exhibition halls. Even the exhibitioners seemed more friendly–willing to answer questions, joke about pricing, and willingly offering substantive conversation. This is all high praise for the world of art galleries.
All that said, I love to discover new-old artists; that is, artists who haven’t just burst onto the scene but are new to myself and to perhaps many others. Like stumbling upon an overlooked classical composer or noticing a house for the first time on a street you’ve traveled on a hundred times before, there is something very personal in the discovery of an artist, almost as though you found them yourself.
One such artist is Terry Allen, a country singer and visual artist from Lubbock, Texas. Lisa Jann, Director of LA Louver gallery in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, was so kind as to give me a guided tour of the exhibition booth, wholly dedicated to this artist’s works. His music was playing in the background as Lisa went through Allen’s biography; trained as an architect, he oscillated between the worlds of music and art.
Allen’s visual output is reminiscent of Rauschenberg’s assemblages, with some didacticism and dry wit of Barbara Kruger thrown in for good measure. In the end, it’s unique and compelling. His music was also embarrassingly unknown to me before visiting this particular booth. Lisa Jann generously gave me a vinyl copy of Juarez, Allen’s first album from 1976, which Rolling Stone called an “outlaw classic” and Pop Matters named as “one of the greatest concept albums of all time.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise was to be found at the James Fuentes gallery booth, much of which was dedicated to the output of Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidadian-American artist that seemed oddly familiar.
It turns out, Holder was a true polymath–an actor, a visual artist, a costume designer, a director, and a composer, among other professions. He might be best known for portraying the henchman Baron Samedi in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, and, for certain Gen Xers and older, the spokesman for 7-Up commercials with his oh-so-distinctive and velvety deep voice.
But Holder also won two Tonys for direction and costume design for The Wiz, performed ballet for the Metropolitan Opera, and choreographed and composed music for the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The more I researched the man, the more I was fascinated by his incredible range and talent.
The two paintings pictured above include a portrait of his wife, Carmen de Lavallade, who is also an actor, dancer, and choreographer. One of his earliest paintings, Untitled from 1952, depicts two calypso dancers in a monumentally powerful pose, with coloring reminiscent of Gauguin and the long necks of Mannerist painter Parmigianino. But drawing on his Trinidadian and Caribbean roots, Holder paints from his own traditions just as equally.
There were so many other notable works on exhibit: Amoako Boafo’s Monstera Leaf Sleeves (Roberts Projects), Yinka Shonibare’s Abstract Bronze (James Cohan), Yayoi Kusama’s Souls of Women that Continue Forever series (David Zwirner), Vanessa German’s Rose Quartz sculptures (Kasmin), Awol Erizku’s Figi (Sean Kelly).
What’s Old Is New Again
In what has become sort of a tradition in these Frieze LA blog posts, I’ll conclude with a focus on art historical references. Though Frieze is focused primarily on newer artists and their innovative styles, there is a conversive tension between new and old displayed all over the art fair. For example, Global Partners like Breguet and Ruinart are both hundreds of years old. It seems quite purposeful to anchor Frieze to reliable mainstays of the past. Yes, the connection to luxury is everywhere and annoyingly pervasive. But more than that, there is a desire to link an art fair only half a decade old (20 years for the original one in London) to the distant past and time-honored brands to give an air of permanence and authenticity to a temporary tent filled with transitory art.
Take, for example, Helena by Maria Klabin at the Nara Roesler booth. It is quite obviously directly inspired by the well-known Flaming June by the Victorian painter Frederic Leighton. Similar in color and pose to the original, Klabin omits the classical background to make the piece more modern and less time specific.
Often there is more than one level of referentialism in an artwork. Let’s look at Awol Erizku, an artist mentioned previously. Originally from Ethiopia, Erizku got his MFA from Yale and has exhibited at the most prestigious museums and galleries in the country. Although claiming to reject Eurocentric norms of beauty and art history, he clearly places his work in that lineage, even if to subvert it. The Nefertitis are in the style of Andy Warhol, but the original bust of the famous Egyptian queen is a masterpiece of art from the New Kingdom. Rather than Marilyn Monroe, Erizku is supplanting the western ideal of beauty with one he terms “Afro-esotericism”.
Another work that spans the intersection of multiple art periods and cultures is Now Shoo, which pictures the iconic Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, of course. But it also embraces L.H.O.O.Q., the famous Dadaist work by Marcel Duchamp and perhaps Salvador Dali’s Self Portrait as Mona Lisa. One sentence obviously cannot convey all the meaning in this artwork, but the simple covering of Mona Lisa’s face reflects the artist’s intention to overturn the traditional canon of art history. Erizku is perhaps the ideal inclusive artist–you must include, not exclude, the past.
In that same vein, I am hopeful that Frieze Los Angeles will continue to mature while acting locally and thinking globally moving forward. It’s hard to imagine an LA art scene without it now.
