After the lethal wildfires in Altadena and the Palisades, Los Angeles was reeling on the time of final yr’s Frieze Los Angeles. However in keeping with Christine Messineo, Frieze’s honest director for the Americas, the collective tenderness and spirit of neighborhood that emerged from the devastation has solely grown stronger.
“There’s nonetheless a throughline between the best way folks confirmed up and handled the honest as a gathering place,” Messineo tells The Artwork Newspaper. “It was the primary second after the fires the place folks felt that they had permission to really feel pleasure, to mirror and to be in neighborhood. That sensibility remains to be right here now.”
Messineo says the honest’s best energy is its plurality: from artists to curators, advisers to collectors and gallerists to non-profit leaders, folks of all stripes descend upon the Santa Monica Airport to rub elbows and speak store. “You may’t stroll via the aisles with out it changing into somewhat little bit of a social second,” Messineo says.
“The honest will get higher yearly,” says Emilia Yin, the proprietor of Make Room gallery, whose stand options work by Erica Mahiney—all of which offered 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 power of town adjustments when Frieze Week rolls round and persons are wanting to get again to enterprise, particularly after difficult seasons. “LA is a metropolis the place neighborhood issues quite a bit,” Liu provides.
Erica Mahinay’s Warmth (2026) is one in all ten work by the artist that offered 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 current College of California, Los Angeles graduate, and offered out through the VIP preview (works have been priced between $7,000 and $20,000). Certainly one of her sculptures went to the California African American Museum and one other was acquired via the so-called MAC3 collaboration between the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork and Museum of Up to date Artwork Los Angeles.
“What stands out to me about Los Angeles is that we’ve a multitudinous world coming collectively,” Messineo provides. That spirit of openness is mirrored within the tempo and kinds of gross sales on the honest this yr, with works by established, rising and long-overlooked artists promoting to native collectors, museums and establishments—and at the least one honest proprietor.
Within the honest’s opening hours, Ari Emanuel, the chief government of Mari Group, which acquired Frieze final yr, walked into the Fort Gansevoort stand proper on the honest’s fundamental entrance and purchased three figurative quilts by Yvonne Wells, an 87-year-old artist from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The leisure and reside 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 exhibiting 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), offered 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 largest 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 offered a 2020 portray by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for $1.5m, 4 new work by current 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 offered three sculptures from its solo stand dedicated to Antony Gormley, for a complete take of at the least £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 through 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 offered 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 at the least $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 offered 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 through the preview, inserting Ed Ruscha’s Heaven (1988) and Scorching Sparks (2025), Frank Gehry’s Fish on Fireplace (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 offered out by the top 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 offered 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 offered 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 offered greater than $800,000 value of artwork through the preview, together with two work by Maia Ruth Lee. Garth Greenan Gallery offered a portray by Howardena Pindell for $875,000 and a portray by Emmi Whitehorse for $150,000. Perrotin offered 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 offered 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 offered two new work by the Los Angeles-based artist Calida Rawles, each within the vary of $60,000 to $80,000. Lisson Gallery offered 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, offered works by Adam de Boer and Massinissa Selmani for a mixed whole of greater than $20,000. The Frieze Influence Prize stand, dedicated to drawings and picket sculptures by Napoles Marty, was solely offered out by the top of the VIP preview—one other signal of a profitable begin for the organisers.
“I really like wanting outdoors and seeing all these folks gathered on the picnic benches and sitting on the garden,” Messineo says. “And that, to me, looks like we did it proper following the fires. Folks have been prepared for it, and it feels that method once more this yr. It’s definitely energetic.”
