Top 5 Experiences and Installations during Frieze Week in LA
In the few years since Frieze Los Angeles debuted in 2019, the energy around it has expanded beyond the Fair itself and into a week of events and creative installations spread throughout the city. Satellite fairs like Felix and Spring/Break along with offsite installations and shows popped up around the city throughout the week. As a producer working in live entertainment and immersive experiences for most of my career, it was refreshing to see many artists and curators coming up with new ways to share work and engage with audiences outside of the traditional gallery setting. Here are my top 5 from experiences from Frieze week 2023.
Paul McCarthy’s Snow White
Artist Paul McCarthy’s immersive show WS White Snow was one of the coolest and most interactive experiences taking place during Frieze week. The piece debuted at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2013 and was reinstalled during Frieze week with support from non-profit Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) to generate interest in creating a permanent home for the massive work. If you aren’t familiar with WS White Snow, it is a reinterpretation of the Disney fairytale, where audiences walk through an 8,800 sq. ft artificial forest, a three-quarter-scale replica of the artist’s childhood home, paired with a seven-hour multi-channel video. Read more about it here.
Barry McGee — Earthworm
San Francisco-based artist Barry McGee inaugurated Emmanuel Perrotin’s new space in Mid ity LA with an impressive installation featuring tons of his work, along with a handful of contemporaries and friends from the graffiti, art and surfing communities. It’s a really big show full of great work that I highly recommend checking it out.
Dear Future — Geatano Pesce at The Future Perfect
Gaetano Pesce — the pioneering artist, industrial designer, and architect — is the subject of the exhibition “Dear Future” (through March 31) at the Future Perfect gallery in Los Angeles. Constituting a wide range of his works from the past 35 years, the exhibition is installed inside the storied Goldwyn House, the gallery’s new L.A. flagship and historic Hollywood mansion that once belonged to film producer and art collector Samuel Goldwyn. Read more about it here.
Acid Frieze Group Show
Artist J.Patrick Walsh curated a group show located inside the Werkstatt Porsche service shop in Santa Monica. The show featured his work along with a handful of LA based contemporaries including Sayre Gomez, Will Boone, Devin Troy Strother and Darren Romanelli among many others. The shop had a vintage porshe in the middle of it and the works were spread out around the walls, tables and on top of various shop equipment. The non traditional setting made it a fun and memorable setting to experience work from a bunch of great artists.
Luna Luna
A few lucky people got the chance to check out Luna Luna during Frieze week. It’s a functional amusement park with rides and attractions doubling as contemporary art pieces from the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Salvador Dalí, which opened, briefly, in Hamburg, Germany, in 1987. The experience recently received funding from Drake and is now being reimagined at a warehouse in LA with new contributions from contemporary artists and will eventually tour to other cities. When the show finally opens to the public, it’s likely to accelerate the dialogue about art living outside the gallery and how artworks can become more interactive.
