In Santa Monica, works from multigenerational artists spotlight California’s lasting influence
Words by ELIZABETH VARNELL
Artist-led practices define the Los Angeles art scene, and Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director of Americas, credits them — alongside collective actions by nonprofits led by the J. Paul Getty Trust — with helping shape the city’s reemergence following last January’s fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades. “What truly defines the city is its resilience, its interconnectedness, its community of artists, curators, galleries, institutions, and collectors,” she says, as the latest Frieze Los Angeles arrives at the Santa Monica Airport from February 26 to March 1. More than 100 galleries are included in this year’s show, and many are focused on painters, sculptors, and multimedia artists who began practices here, are being rediscovered, or are currently sparking conversations — all of which are influential in continuing to shape West Coast art.
Across fair galleries, Messineo says she sees works from “people who helped really establish the L.A. scene as a hub for conceptual, photographic, and politically engaged art to practices engaging urgently with migration, identity, and ecology.” As always, an international contingent of galleries, including Gagosian, David Zwirner, Perrotin, White Cube, Gladstone Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Liston, and Pace Gallery — many with artists connected to L.A. — joins locals from Matthew Brown, Chateau Shatto, David Kordansky, Commonwealth and Council, and Roberts Projects to The Pit. “Around this year’s fair campus, there are really exciting solo presentations, dual presentations, group exhibitions, and really ambitious site-specific projects that reflect both L.A.’s distinct character, and its international reach,” Messineo says.
She first points to L.A.-born assemblage and multimedia artist Betye Saar who, at age 95, hand-painted a re-creation of her 1983 public mural, L.A. Energy, at the 2022 fair. Now Saar is approaching a new milestone. “Roberts Projects, which marks the centennial of Betye Staar, is presenting archival materials and some of the altered Polaroids that reflect her enduring engagement with Black identity and political art.” Because Saar, who has been collecting found objects and ephemera since her childhood, still counts Pasadena City College’s flea market as a favorite stop for fabrics and rusty treasures, her pieces often have community roots.
Gagosian is showing Frank Gehry, David Hockney, and Ed Ruscha works alongside those of artists Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud who called the Bay Area home, plus recent pieces by the gallery’s local stable including Sterling Ruby, Urs Fischer, Jennifer Guidi, Lauren Halsey, Alex Israel, Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins, Jim Shaw, Honor Titus, Mary Weatherford, and Jonas Wood. Yancy Richardson and Casemore Gallery are partnering with a solo presentation of Larry Sultan’s The Valley (1998–2003), a series of photographs set in suburban San Fernando Valley homes that double as adult film sets.
Marley Freeman’s abstract paintings at Parker Gallery comprise a solo show highlighting patterns housed at L.A.’s Textile Artifacts, a family-run textile archive founded by Freeman’s father, Paul. Messineo says the canvases are “alive with color, abstraction, and memory, and inspired by Freeman’s childhood being surrounded by textiles; some of the work embraces the texture and mimics fabrics through brushstrokes.” Jeffrey Deitch’s solo show devoted to Sharif Farrag’s figurative ceramics sculptures marks a return to Frieze for the Reseda-born artist whose Art Production Fund project, Rat Race, took over the soccer fields during the 2024 fair.
The Focus section, organized by The Hammer Museum’s Made In L.A. 2025 curator Essence Harden, includes 15 emerging galleries, all from L.A., with solo shows spanning new sculptures from Zenobia Lee at Sea View to Erica Mahinay’s sculptures and striped paintings at Make Room. Also, an inaugural Frieze Library comprising artist publications donated by galleries will jump-start a permanent collection at the newly reopened Pacific Palisades Library. The American debut of Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata’s collaboration with Ruinart, part of its Conversations with Nature series, can be found in the Champagne house’s Art Lounge where the sketches, drawings, and pieces made with reclaimed wood from his Destruction collection are on view. Known for its food offerings, the fair includes a host of restaurants with temporary outposts at the airport including Roberta’s, Ayara Thai, Kismet Rotisserie, Regarding Her, and Sunday Gravy plus an added beverage and snack spot, Cookbook Market, inside the tent. Food trucks with a local following including Dinas Dumpling and Sunset Smash are also on hand.
Art Production Fund’s Casey Freemont is again commissioning a number of public works by local artists for the fair, including Patrick Martinez’s neon installation — a form of visual resistance addressing immigration — at the fair’s entrance, and an off-campus piece by Kelly Wall called Everything Must Go in a former Westwood Village newsstand. Wall, also part of the Hammer’s most recent Made In L.A. show, continues her focus on stained glass, moving from a postcard stand at The Hammer to a newsstand at Frieze. Freemont says “136 unique glass sculptures with ‘sunset covers’ take the spaces once occupied by magazines and newspapers.” The glass stand-ins for print publications in Wall’s piece are illuminated on lightbox shelves, and as each is purchased (“magazines” are $300 or can be won by pulling a lucky card), a silhouette remains, marking its absence. The newsstand is open daily during the fair from sunset at 5:48 p.m. to 8 p.m. At the airport, Wall transformed repurposed newspaper boxes into illuminated light boxes also containing a glass publication. But, for those seeking out the real thing, current issues of Frieze magazines are also on hand.
Feature image: Mary Weatherford Saffron Emerald Split, 2026. Image courtesy the artist and Gagosian. PHOTO: Fredrik Nilsen.
February 26, 2026
Discover more CULTURE news.
