And so it begins.
Los Angeles’ major art fair season commences this month with the city’s largest and longest-running fair. That would be the LA Art Show celebrating its 25th anniversary, once again at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 5, 2020.
According to the fair’s founder, Kim Martindale “Twenty-five years ago when I began the LA Art Show, there weren’t any big art fairs here.” Now of course, this major fair serves as the beginning to a wide array of art fairs throughout the city. And it’s still seminal.
There will be over 100 galleries from 18 different countries; the opening night preview and premiere party will donate a portion of ticket revenue to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Actress Sofia Vergara will helm the celebration.
The re-branded Feature Exhibitions area of the show includes the return of INK, the largest presentation of both contemporary and traditional ink painting of any art fair outside of Asia. New this year, the LA Art Show will be hosting a live ink painting demonstration, by Japanese master Sogen Chiba. Chiba is from Japan’s 2011 disaster-hit Ishinomaki district, and has created intensely moving imagery as an outgrowth of this experience that can only be expressed in calligraphy. Walker Fine Art will be presenting a the works of M.C. Escher, including never-before-seen VR experiences, and Oscar-winning artist Kazuhiro Tsuji premieres a brand new Iconoclast portrait sculpture.
Viewers will also find work the 70s era photographic work of John Wehrheim in his depiction of Taylor Camp: The Edge of Paradise.
The third edition of the DIVERSEartLA showcase focuses on cultural diversity from Southern California, around the Pacific Rim, and beyond, with over 20,000-square-feet devoted to these works which are not for sale. They include exhibitions from LACMA, The Broad, Japanese American National Museum, La
Neomudejar Museum from Madrid, MOLAA, Art Al Limite, LA Art Association, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and more, such as the Danubiana Museum of Bratislava.
Performance programming for the series includes work by PSJM Collective from Spain and artist Miss Art World, presented by the LA Art Association. Among the participants in the performance “Diversity Walks & Talks” will be LA sculptural and mixed media artist Chenhung Chen.
For the first time, LA Art Show will be hosting a special programming section named the European Pavilion, highlighting the world-class exhibitors hailing from Western Europe. Patrick Painter Gallery, SM Fine Art, Zeal House, Mizuma Art Gallery and Kamiya Co., LTD are all returning for CORE.
Presented by the Bruce Lurie Gallery, Lorenzo Marini presents his new art-installation ALPHACUBE.
Curator Sabino Maria Frassà explains that ALPHACUBE turns that paradigm of the the white cube as the best form for conveying contemporary art. The artwork is a large white cube, that immerses guests in a space animated by letters, light and sound.
Along with the LA Art Show’s global cutting-edge programming, a bevy of local artists will be exhibiting at BG Gallery, Coagula, and Wallspace.
AT bG Gallery, Susan Lizotte will show brand new paintings about LA; her aesthetic provides a visceral look at the city. Artists Barbara Kolo, Fred Tieken, Gay Summer Rick, and Hung Viet Nguyen with his Sacred Landscapes series will also be on display. Photographic artist Richard Chow will be at bG’s Gestalt Projects Wall with an image from his Distant Memories series. Each artist could be described as offering intensely unique work that is rooted in their home in Los Angeles.
Coagula is helming four booths this year, showing six artists with two in each both. The gallery will be showing new work that includes a group show of Chouinard Art Institute alumni featuring Frederick Hammersly, Llyn Foulkes, Robert Irwin, Judith Stabile, Robert Williams, Chaz Bojoroquez and John Van Hammersfeld, including Williams’ limited edition skateboards. Contemporary LA artists Randi Matushevitz, with her expressionist HeadSpace body of work “combines pattern, figuration, and narrative to cultivate humanistic expressions,” she relates. According to gallerist Mat Gleason, “Todd Westover paints retro floral abstractions, Mark Dutcher is the pre-eminent Los Angeles painter walking the line between dream representations and abstract longing. Lavialle Campbell quilts geometric modernist abstraction that politically nudges issues of race and gender without sacrificing aesthetics. Melinda R. Smith paints the icon of houses… Gabriel Ortiz investigates the many ways in which racial issues have been co-opted and suppressed by imposed religion.”
ViCA, the Venice Institute of Contemporary Art, helmed by artist and curator Juri Koll brings motion pictures to the festival. “We have our own screening space for curated short films from Fine Arts Film Festival 2019 – films from Russia, Australia, the US and Norway.”
Wallspace Art Gallery, which like ViCA also has space in DTLA’s Bendix Building, is also featuring a booth that highlights Los Angeles artists; gallerist Valda Lake says this is the first year at the fair for the gallery. Fabrik Projects hosts two booths, one featuring the innovative richly decorative work of J.T. Burke.
The other booth features a range of artists that include Amadea Bailey,
Linda Stelling, Nancy R. Wise, Helena Hauss, Chris Bakay, Ted VanCleave, Cathy Immordino, Jung Yeon Bae, Jessie Chaney, Go Woon Choi, Jessus Hernandez and “guest artist” Eric Johnson. Immordino’s innovative photographic collage work is focused for 2020 on her Heads series. According to the artist “Heads features local Angelenos in collages with magazine elements conceptually discussing how society views others’ imperfections.”
Johnson’s dazzling large scale The Maize Project abstractly represents a lodge pole-like Native American structure, a sculptural gathering place that evokes a section of an ear of maize corn.
In short: art fair season has begun with a major bang from the LA Art Show.
OPENING NIGHT PREMIERE
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Red Card & Patrons Preview 6pm – 11pm
Opening Night Premiere 8pm – 11pm
SHOW HOURS
Thursday, February 6, 2020 | 11am – 7pm
Friday, February 7, 2020 | 11am – 7pm
Saturday, February 8, 2020 | 11am – 7pm
Sunday, February 9, 2020 | 11am – 5pm
LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER – SOUTH HALL
1201 South Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90015
https://www.seetickets.us/event/THE-LA-ART-SHOW/381725
- Genie Davis; Photos courtesy LA Art Show