Welcome to Frieze Los Angeles

At Paramount Studios, the world’s leading galleries join Los Angeles’s defining art spaces to celebrate our city’s position as a global arts center and destination. All across the Paramount Backlot in a set built to be a stand-in for a real city, curated artist projects illustrate Los Angeles’s vibrant interplay of artifice and reality. Interspersed are creative experiments in retail, patronage, and publishing from some of Los Angeles’s most celebrated artist networks and talked-about enterprises. The Backlot provides fairgoers a special opportunity to wander this ‘non-place’ where other worlds are produced and imagine a city where art is at the center of the conversation.— Bettina Korek, Executive Director, Frieze Los Angeles

Blue Sky Tank

The Frieze Los Angeles gallery tent is built over an area that could be flooded with over a million gallons of water to film aquatic scenes, from The Ten Commandments (1956) to Waterworld (1995). The 177-foot wide mural wall, painted like the sky, completes the illusion.

Advise from Art Advisors

Meredith Darrow says: “Explore the L.A. based galleries and artists, my favorites of which are Blum & Poe and David Kordansky Gallery for more established artists - and Chateau Shatto and Night Gallery for younger emerging artists. At the same time, remember that many established galleries participate in fairs these days with the goal of placing works in that fair’s geographic region. That makes this a fantastic opportunity for L.A.-based collectors to be prioritized by world-class galleries, who don’t have brick and mortar spaces here. I’m particularly excited about Sadie Coles HQ, Thomas Dane Gallery and David Zwirner and looking forward to working with them on acquisitions for L.A based collections.” 

The Backlot

Constructed to resemble a city, the Paramount Backlot features a ‘Financial District’ and rows of Brownstones and other streetscapes — featured in countless movies and shows. These set the stage for Frieze Los Angeles Productions “on the lot”, including artist projects, events, pop-ups and food.

Frieze Projects

For Frieze Projects, curator Ali Subotnick has invited artists who live, work or have histories in Los Angeles to develop projects that ‘grapple with a land of make-believe, built to be seen on film’. Though, unlike the main gallery section of the fair, these works are not necessarily for sale, Frieze Projects supports ambitious, experimental work— from a washing line of paintings to a Psychic Art Advisor—that otherwise would not be shown at an art fair.

Frieze Projects includes work by: Lisa Anne Auerbach, Mark Bradford, Eugenia Butler + Corazón del Sol, Sarah Cain, Catharine Czudej, Karon Davis, Cayetano Ferrer, Hannah Greely, Trulee Hall, Patrick Jackson, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Shahryar Nashat, Kori Newkirk, Max Hooper Schneider and Tino Sehgal

Food at Frieze

Widely agreed to have the best food of any art fair, Frieze’s fair in Los Angeles is no different, with coffee, refreshments and dining options including: Baroo, Cinqué LA, Coni’s Seafood, Milkbar, Roberta’s and Sqirl.

Acid Free

Premiering last May, Acid Free is an art book market organized by a collective of L.A.-based independent publishers. This special Frieze edition is the place to buy everything from a glossy gallery catalogue, to a rare, out of print monograph or a limited run artists ‘zine.

Ruinart Lounge

Raise a glass of Champagne at the Ruinart Lounge and note down your toast: it can be translated into Morse code and performed by singers as part of a piece created by Los Angeles-based artist Emily Mast, entitled Continuous Wave (2019).

Tom Cruise Door

Side by side are two identical but differently sized doors that are used to make shorter actors look taller (and vice-versa). Paramount staffers, it’s said, nicknamed these doors “Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman” after the two actors’ well-known height difference.

Browsing

Check out the New York-style newsstands for leading art magazines and merch from California arts non-profits like A-Z West and the Women’s Center for Creative Work. Also here are re:LA — selling L.A. -inspired accessories to benefit LACMA — and local legacy brands andSons Chocolatiers and Pretend Plants and Flowers.

Talk, Music and Film

Curated by Hamza Walker, Director of L.A. non-profit art space LAXART, Frieze Talks and Frieze Music begin with "Name That Tune", a series organized by Josh Kun which uses music as a way to engage artists and thinkers. Meanwhile, Frieze Film screenings include curated presentations of work by Cécile B. Evans, Tala Madani and Anri Sala as well as landmark pieces from Frieze’s history. For the full schedules, go online or get the Frieze Art Fairs app.

Hollywood Forever

Hollywood’s only cemetery neighbors Paramount Pictures Studios to the north. Founded in 1899, legends interned here include: Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Judy Garland, John Huston, Hattie McDaniel, Art Pepper, Johnny Ramone, Holly Woodlawn, Fay Wray and Rudolph Valentino

Need a Ride?

When done for the day, head to Gower Street or Van Ness Avenue for the official ride-share pick-up zones.