Some Art I Liked: Frieze Los Angeles Art Fair

Frieze LA, February 29-March 3, 2024

Nearly a hundred galleries converged at Santa Monica Airport for this year’s highly anticipated Frieze LA Art Fair. Despite the inevitable traffic, an enthusiastic crowd showed up ready to talk, debate, and acquire art. Here are a selection of my favorite pieces from the weekend.

Mungo Thomson, Snowman, 2023 (Galerie Frank Elbaz)

Mungo’s work repurposes the ubiquitous cardboard box into a bronze monument befitting our consumer era. It’s fun to think of the technical work to make these pieces so eerily accurate (down to the ‘paper tape’), but it’s also an interesting conceit to consider the disposability of delivery boxes being made more durable with a valuable metal. Viewing these boxes as potential relics for future anthropologists seems to be Mungo’s fun provocation for the viewer.

Trevor Paglen, CLOUD #557 | Hough Line Transform; Hough Circle Transform, 2023 (Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco)

Trevor’s photography merges with technology to tell a story about how computers perceive nature. In this work, a photograph of a serene pink sky serves as a canvas overlaid with graphics that offer insight into how AI perceives its surroundings. Upon close inspection, you can see intricate lines and charts illustrating the perspective of a military drone program scanning the sky for potential threats. The whimsical sight of harmless wisps of clouds being targeted by drones may make you laugh or feel unease, depending on your present affinity for AI.

Eamon Ore-Giron, Talking Shit with the Snake People, 2024 (James Cohan, NYC)

Eamon creates intensely colorful patterns in his abstract work based on historical art: in this piece he references Mesoamerican mythology. What’s incredible about his process is that his works are created entirely without the aid of tape or stencils, a true technical feat given the size of this piece.

James Perkins, Tamarisk Bloom, 2023 (Hannah Traore Gallery, NYC)

In his abstract pieces, James gathers silk fabrics of diverse colors, stretches them on 2x4 frames, and then buries the works in sand at his Fire Island studio. Over the course of two years, the pieces are stained and weathered by natural elements before being left to cure in the open air for several months. The resulting artwork serves as a curious symbol of ecological impact, showcasing the beauty found in decay and the passage of time.

Max Hooper Schneider, Behind the Light, 2023 (Maureen Paley, NYC)

Max describes his practice as one exploring the connection between philosophy and nature, drawing heavily from his background in landscape architecture and marine biology. This small piece (9 x 12 inches) packs a punch: he imagines an intricate fantasyland one might see through a microscope. These pieces are so labor-intensive that he only produces one of these drawings each year.

Jordan Casteel, Transit, 2023 (Casey Kaplan, NYC)

Jordan, a critically acclaimed painter and current MacArthur Genius Fellow, is renowned for her deeply personal portrayal of Black subjects. In this particular piece, she skillfully captures a tender and intimate moment—a mother and child resting together in a subway train. That she captures this scene of care within a space typically characterized by cold silence and averted gazes adds a layer of depth to the piece.

These were a tiny sliver of the pieces on display at Frieze LA — and (I think!) I saw them all. If you'd like to learn more about these pieces or artists, or want to learn more about art collecting, ping me. I love hearing from folks who read this thing!