After the lethal wildfires in Altadena and the Palisades, Los Angeles was reeling on the time of final 12 months’s Frieze Los Angeles. However in response to Christine Messineo, Frieze’s truthful director for the Americas, the collective tenderness and spirit of group that emerged from the devastation has solely grown stronger.
“There’s nonetheless a throughline between the way in which individuals confirmed up and handled the truthful as a gathering place,” Messineo tells The Artwork Newspaper. “It was the primary second after the fires the place individuals felt that they had permission to really feel pleasure, to replicate and to be in group. That sensibility continues to be right here now.”
Messineo says the truthful’s biggest power is its plurality: from artists to curators, advisers to collectors and gallerists to non-profit leaders, individuals of all stripes descend upon the Santa Monica Airport to rub elbows and speak store. “You possibly can’t stroll by means of the aisles with out it changing into slightly little bit of a social second,” Messineo says.
“The truthful will get higher yearly,” says Emilia Yin, the proprietor of Make Room gallery, whose stand options work by Erica Mahiney—all of which bought throughout Thursday’s VIP preview, for costs between $5,500 and $35,000. One work was acquired by the Santa Monica Artwork Financial institution. Yin says the vitality of town modifications when Frieze Week rolls round and persons are desirous to get again to enterprise, particularly after difficult seasons. “LA is a metropolis the place group issues lots,” Liu provides.
Erica Mahinay’s Warmth (2026) is certainly one of ten work by the artist that bought from Make Room’s stand on Thursday Carlin Stiehl
Essence Harden, the co-curator of the present Made in L.A. biennial on the Hammer Museum (till 1 March), curated Frieze’s Focus sector. The native gallery Sea View has devoted its stand within the sector to Zenobia Lee, a latest College of California, Los Angeles graduate, and bought out in the course of the VIP preview (works had been priced between $7,000 and $20,000). One in every of her sculptures went to the California African American Museum and one other was acquired by means of the so-called MAC3 collaboration between the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork and Museum of Modern Artwork Los Angeles.
“What stands out to me about Los Angeles is that now we have a multitudinous world coming collectively,” Messineo provides. That spirit of openness is mirrored within the tempo and varieties of gross sales on the truthful this 12 months, with works by established, rising and long-overlooked artists promoting to native collectors, museums and establishments—and no less than one truthful proprietor.
Within the truthful’s opening hours, Ari Emanuel, the chief govt of Mari Group, which acquired Frieze final 12 months, walked into the Fort Gansevoort stand proper on the truthful’s foremost entrance and purchased three figurative quilts by Yvonne Wells, an 87-year-old artist from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The leisure and dwell occasions mogul, maybe unsurprisingly, was taken with Wells’s renderings of three icons of stage and display screen, buying her quilts depicting Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley for costs between $50,000 and $60,000 every. That is the New York gallery’s first time exhibiting at Frieze Los Angeles and Wells’s first time displaying anyplace in Los Angeles.
“At 87 years outdated, Wells is receiving the worldwide recognition her work has lengthy deserved,” says Adam Shopkorn, Fort Gansevoort’s proprietor and founder.
Yvonne Wells’s quilt Marilyn Monroe (2001), bought by Fort Gansevoort © Yvonne Wells. Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort, New York
Bevy of blue-chip gross sales
A Frieze Los Angeles common, David Zwirner, reported the most important sale to date because the VIP preview got here to an in depth, with a 2016 work by the Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby being acquired by a European basis for $2.8m. The gallery additionally bought a 2020 portray by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for $1.5m, 4 new work by latest signee Louis Fratino for costs between $35,000 and $75,000, a brand new work on paper and a portray by Lisa Yuskavage for a complete of $460,000, and extra.
White Dice bought three sculptures from its solo stand dedicated to Antony Gormley, for a complete take of no less than £1.5m. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery reported greater than a half-dozen gross sales from its group presentation, totalling greater than $2m. Native powerhouse David Kordansky Gallery (which additionally has an outpost in New York) reported a number of gross sales led by a Jonas Wooden nonetheless lifetime of a bonsai for $600,000, in addition to Mary Weatherford’s Dawn, Venus (2026) for $300,000; all in all, the gallery reported greater than $2.4m in gross sales.
Tempo Gallery reported round $1.8m in gross sales in the course of the preview, led by a 1983 portray by Jean Dubuffet that went for $475,000, and Emily Kam Kngwarray’s portray Transition (1990) for $450,000. The gallery additionally bought one sculpture and two works on paper by Robert Longo for costs starting from $90,000 to $175,000, a Hank Willis Thomas sculpture for $40,000 and a Kiki Smith work on paper for $30,000, amongst others.
Gladstone reported no less than $1.39m in gross sales, together with a $700,000 Keith Haring sculpture, a large-scale portray by Ugo Rondinone for $260,000 and work by Frances Stark and Karen Kilimnik for $75,000 and $65,000, respectively. The gallery additionally bought a number of editions of Robert Mapplethorpe images within the vary of $200,000 every and a number of work by Rachel Rose for $35,000 every.
Gagosian reported a “brisk” gross sales day in the course of the preview, inserting Ed Ruscha’s Heaven (1988) and Scorching Sparks (2025), Frank Gehry’s Fish on Hearth (2023), Alex Israel’s Paramount Photos (2025) and new works by Jonas Wooden and Mary Weatherford—all for undisclosed costs.
Hauser & Wirth devoted its stand to a solo presentation of work by the Portugal-based German artist Conny Maier, which had bought out by the tip of the VIP preview (however didn’t disclose costs).
Sprüth Magers’s stand options eye-catching wallpaper and a towering camel by the late Los Angeles legend John Baldessari Carlin Stiehl
Almine Rech bought a portray by Ewa Juszkiewicz for a value within the vary of $800,000 to $850,000, amongst greater than a half-dozen works. Thaddaeus Ropac bought a 2022 portray by Alex Katz for $700,000, a 2025 David Salle portray for $280,000 and a Liza Lou portray for $200,000, amongst others. Tina Kim Gallery bought greater than $800,000 price of artwork in the course of the preview, together with two work by Maia Ruth Lee. Garth Greenan Gallery bought a portray by Howardena Pindell for $875,000 and a portray by Emmi Whitehorse for $150,000. Perrotin bought a portray by Bharti Kher within the vary of $180,000 to $195,000, amongst different works.
Early within the day, Bay Space gallery Jessica Silverman bought a brand new portray by Hayal Pozanti for $75,000 lain butterfly-wing sculpture by Rebecca Manson for $65,000, amongst others. From a solo nook dedicated to Beverly Fishman, the gallery positioned 5 vibrant wall sculptures for $25,000 every.
Sprüth Magers gross sales included notable Los Angeles artists, amongst them Barbara Kruger’s work on paper Untitled (Your distress loves firm) (1985) for $95,000 and a 16mm color movie by native legend Kenneth Anger for $50,000. Lehmann Maupin bought two new work by the Los Angeles-based artist Calida Rawles, each within the vary of $60,000 to $80,000. Lisson Gallery bought two works by the Los Angeles-based sculptor Kelly Akashi for $60,000 and $55,000, amongst others.
The New York-based Jane Lombard Gallery, collaborating in Frieze Los Angeles for the primary time, bought works by Adam de Boer and Massinissa Selmani for a mixed complete of greater than $20,000. The Frieze Affect Prize stand, dedicated to drawings and picket sculptures by Napoles Marty, was completely bought out by the tip of the VIP preview—one other signal of a profitable begin for the organisers.
“I like wanting outdoors and seeing all these individuals gathered on the picnic benches and sitting on the garden,” Messineo says. “And that, to me, appears like we did it proper following the fires. Individuals had been prepared for it, and it feels that method once more this 12 months. It’s actually energetic.”
