Frieze Week Los Angeles 2024
February 2024

Once upon a time, Santa Monica Airport was fully disguised as a model suburb, with false facades created by Hollywood set designers. This fascinating episode informs the themes of this year’s Frieze Projects, curated by Art Production Fund. Featuring artists like Sharif Farrag and Matt Johnson, this initiative reflects director Christine Messineo’s vision for the fair to channel Los Angeles’s unique creative landscape: see also, the innovative Focus section, curated by Essence Harden, which includes a raft of progressive, local galleries. A recently re-championed artist, Pippa Garner, will be very visible at the airport this year, and thinking about how Garner plays with illusion and the unexpected inspired our decision to commission Carlijn Jacobs to create this issue’s cover image. Jacobs’s visual essay, in turn, reminds me of Lana Del Rey singing about “handmade beauty sealed up by two manmade walls.” To misquote the song, did you know that there’s a Lalanne topiary dinosaur beside Ocean Avenue? On the Westside, it seems, there are surprises lurking behind every corner and curtain.

- Matthew McLean, Creative Director, Frieze Studios & Editor, Frieze Week

From this issue

The birthplace of “California Cuisine” has also drawn countless artists to its tables, and their art to its walls, from Judy Chicago to Mary Weatherford

 

BY Catherine G. Wagley |

Artists like Anna Sew Hoy and Karla Ekaterine Canseco are picking up the mantle of the pioneering Venezuela-born, Venice-based ceramic artist

BY Jennifer S. Li |

Judy Baca’s mural The Great Wall of Los Angeles has been nearly 50 years in the making. Now, she’s working on it live in public at LACMA, in a historic gesture of creative transparency and cultural community

BY Armando Pulido |

Under the curation of Essence Harden for the first time, 2024’s section for young galleries is rooted in community, place and ideas of ecology

 

BY Taylor Bythewood-Porter |

The home of Frieze Los Angeles was once covered by an entire fake suburb created by Hollywood set designers: a deception that inspires this year’s Frieze Projects program, curated by Art Production Fund

BY Thara Parambi |

As the renowned painter and printmaker’s work with Gemini G.E.L. features in a new exhibition at the Getty Center, his legacy for the Westside artistic community remains vital

BY Allison Noelle Conner |

The artist celebrates the Westside’s Museum of Jurassic Technology—“like walking into an enormous, smoky-quartz crystal ball aswirl with dried sperm, butterfly scales and chicken-sized RVs”

BY Max Hooper Schneider |

Recently appointed at the Hammer Museum, the curator enjoys studio visits, Taiwanese food and getting lost

BY Pablo José Ramírez |

Drawing on the themes of this year’s Frieze Projects Los Angeles, the photographer reflects on the seduction of the cosmetic image and very Hollywood constructions of allure, artifice and illusion

BY Matthew McLean |

Three of the artist’s projects are presented at Santa Monica Airport—including a little-seen ’zine—exploring physical appearance, gender-hacking and consumer culture

BY Matthew McLean |

Clifford Prince King takes the photos as the philanthropist and co-founder of Art + Practice discusses her journey, from buying her first artwork to the publication of a new book on her collection

BY Taylor Renee Aldridge |