Frieze Los Angeles: An Extravagant Celebration of Art and Culture
The Frieze Los Angeles, 2024 opened its doors to the public with a spectacular line-up of 95 galleries and artists coming together for its fifth rendition. With the aim to bring forward the finest contemporary galleries and artists from across the globe, Christine Messineo (Director of Americas, Frieze) expressed her vision, “Frieze Los Angeles 2024 will be a destination for the international audience, coming together to celebrate the continued growth of the Los Angeles’ art scene. Both visitors and exhibitors will benefit from our expanded footprint, centralized layout and redesigned exterior spaces. We look forward to welcoming galleries from around the globe (including leading art spaces across Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America), from Korea to Mexico, Japan to Germany, alongside a strong core of exhibitors from across California, to provide an unparalleled snapshot of today’s most compelling artists and galleries.”
Courtesy: Casey Kelbough and Frieze
The fair was also the talk of the town for its unique site plan, reconceptualising the outdoor space as a hub for public gatherings. Below are some exhibitions that have garnered significant attention and traction at Frieze Los Angeles 2024.
Nara Roesler
Esteemed Gallery Nara Roesler Gallery opened at Frieze Los Angeles with a solo exhibition by Brazilian artist Maria Klabin. The exhibition depicted a series of figures sleeping and the canvas was dotted with obscure figures juxtaposed with a series of depictions communicating drowsiness, quietness and tranquility. Klabin has created a rich tapestry of broad brushstrokes in oil and composed magnificent structures.
Courtesy: Nara Roesler Website
The artist constantly evolved and added finesse to her work by experimenting, creating more portraits, drawings, and photographs and incorporating her experience in performative arts such as dancing. Thus, reminding one of a very well-choreographed encounter between her and her work.
Courtesy: Nara Roesler Website
The oeuvre included works enumerating observations that caught attention during the pandemic. Klabin centres her attention on themes of individuality. She also dwells in the relationship between space and them, metamorphosing into a pristine landscape.
Proyectos Monclova
The gallery presented a stunning oeuvre of the artist Aydeé Rodríguez López in orange as its backdrop. Orange was employed to demonstrate the Afro-Mexicans’ lived experience. Racism has been a fundamental concern in Mexican society, as Black individuals were denied the right to exist. In the country’s long history, Vicente Guerro, the general who led the country’s win from Spanish colonialism, was the second president and only African descent head of the state. However, Guerro has been portrayed as white, in an attempt to conceal the country’s rich and diverse history.
Courtesy Proyectos Monclova
The exhibit also entails the works of artist and musician, David Montaño Roque, who created masks used in the Dance of the Devils. Dance of the Devils is a traditional ritual dance performed in the Costa Chica part of Guerro and Oaxaca. The African-origin dance form pays tribute to the black god Ruja, invoked by people to free themselves from taxing work conditions.
Courtesy: Proyectos Monclova
Kasmin Gallery
Vanessa German, an American Artist, made her Kasmin Gallery debut at the Frieze Los Angeles. The presentation showcased German’s sculpture, employing her unique medium – rose quartz. The oeuvre includes sculpted crystal heads along with another assemblage figure. German builds on rose quartz’s symbolic connotation and evokes ideas of healing, redemption, resistance and love. The work was accompanied by a “prayer” recorded by the artist.
Courtesy Kasmin Gallery Website
Rose Quartz use has been documented from the Mesopotamian era to the present day. They not only symbolise spatial reality, as they are naturally occurring, but they also symbolise transcending time and space. Harking back to ancestral knowledge, German also looks at the rose-quartz as an integration of body, mind and spirit, providing harmony in the mind of people in the fast-paced society. The aspect of spirituality is very prominent in German’s work, this ingrained ethos is what inspires the artist.
Courtesy: Kasmin Gallery
Nazarian / Curcio
The gallery presented the solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based Haitian artist, Widline Cadet. Cadet built on her previous work as an Artist-in-Residence at Studio Museum, Harlem and exhibit at MoMA PS1, presenting videos and photographs that delve into intergenerational trauma, identity and erasure within Haitian diasporic lived experience.
Courtesy: Nazarian/Curcio Website
Her body of work comprises self-portraits (including other performers as Cadet’s double), pictures of family members, landscapes and still lives that took viewers on a journey between Cadet’s life in Haiti and her present idea of self and identity as a Black immigrant woman in America. Cadet challenged set standards of photographic display. Framed videos were embedded in still photographs to construct a world within a world. Her works provided panoramic as well as close viewing space.
Courtesy: Nazarian/Curcio Website
Art Production Fund
‘Set Seen’, curated by the Art Production Fund, envisions site-specific artworks. It included a line-up of artists like Sharif Farrag, Ryan Flores, Derek Fordjour, Pippa Garner, Matt Johnson and Cynthia Talmadge.
Courtesy Daniel Greer
Derek Fordjour, Ghanaian-origin artist, explored with his work the cultural tropes of the US. His work titled “Player Series”, 2013, drew ideas from wanted posters, athletic trading cards, yearbook photos and police mugshots. Fordjour critiqued institutional systems with his portraits on prisons, auctions, sports and education.
Courtesy: The Ranch
Giant Shell Swan, an eight-foot-tall bronze sculpture by Malibu-based Matt Johnson, showcased a swan made out of seashells. The Swan occupied multiple symbolism in both myth and legend, shown as a creature of wisdom, grace, mute beauty, fidelity and strength. The installation attempted to convey the humorous paradoxical nature of a living animal made from dead animals’ shells.
Text by Shalini Passi
Image Courtesy: Frieze Los Angeles, Nara Roesler, Proyectos Monclova, Kasmin Gallery, Nazarian/Curcio
Find more about the Frieze Los Angeles:
https://www.frieze.com/tags/frieze-los-angeles-2024
https://nararoesler.art/en/art-fairs/121/
https://www.kasmingallery.com/art-fairs/25/
