As Frieze LA returns to Santa Monica Airport, artists are understandably thinking about the recent fires, the power of nature, the importance of community, and the prospect of humanity’s tech-filled future in a world increasingly affected by widespread environmental collapse. Here are five standout artists and works from this year’s fair.
Athena LaTocha – Babst Gallery
Alaskan-born artist Athena LaTocha created the works in Babst Gallery’s booth while wildfires were sweeping through rural Canada in 2023. Thinking about the energy and force generated by combustion in the natural world, LaTocha collects burnt wood, rocks, and bricks from the New Hampshire forest. She then unfurls large expanses of paper on the floor and stands in the middle, scattering her foraged charcoal amidst pools of earth-toned ink made from walnut shells. The ink – made less viscous by the addition of distilled water and industrial solvents – is pushed around the paper using a series of aggressive tools such as wire brushes, scrap metal, reclaimed tire shreds, bricks, and rocks. She moves through the work as she creates, as if she is traversing the terrain.
The resulting abstract compositions reclaim the land LaTocha grew up in. Alaska’s Eagle River is a place familiar with the tension between natural beauty and industrial mechanisation; LaTocha’s work takes these natural materials and uses an industrial framework to apply them, creating dense, powerful compositions that evoke storms, mountains, forests, and oxidized metal.
Xin Liu – Make Room
Xin Liu is an artist and engineer interested in science, technology, and the shifting human experience in a world dominated by both. In Make Room’s booth, Liu presents a new series of mixed-media sculptures and wall works that allude to the relatively recent phenomenon of biohacking – the quest of an individual or group for dramatically extended lifespans through the use of developing technology.
The Theater of Metamorphoses captures the tension between the ephemeral and fragile nature of human existence and the seemingly robust and resilient aspects of our bodies – all cloaked in a slightly sinister sci-fi aesthetic that borrows the skeletal shapes of imagined alien life forms and the architecture of intergalactic discovery.
Fiona Connor – Maureen Paley & Chateau Shatto
LA-based artist Fiona Connor has work on display in both Maureen Paley’s and Chateau Shatto’s booths. With a practice that exists at the intersection of architecture, sculpture, and installation, Connor meticulously recreates everyday ephemera and, by placing them in an artistic context, questions how we attribute value to objects.
These intricately crafted replicas challenge the notion of how art should be experienced. In Maureen Paley’s booth, Connor presents one of her ‘community notice board’ works – an amalgamation of bulletins posted on different boards across the city, screen-printed or UV-printed onto aluminum sheets (as opposed to displaying or photocopying the original objects). The resulting mixture of messaging is often humorous, with notices warning about coyotes overlapping with earthquake safety tips and advertisements for condo interior designers.
In Chateau Shatto’s booth, Connor presents a large freestanding sculpture: a mid-century wooden door from Greenblatt’s Delicatessen, with notices in the glass window reading, “Please knock on the door for mail and package drop-off” and “We have closed. Thanks to all our loyal customers for a great 95 years!”
Adam Alessi – Hannah Hoffman
LA-based portrait artist Adam Alessi wants his figures to return the critical gaze of the viewer; as you judge the work, the subject is judging you – often sneering or scowling in a bid to unsettle. Alessi has previously said he wants his work to trigger a feeling of “inescapable embarrassment” in the viewer, lighting the fires of anxiety and introspection.
Nosferatu Man, Alessi’s painting in Hannah Hoffman’s booth at Frieze, utilises his signature moss-green palette, which complements the textures of the linen canvas beneath. The figure is eerie, wreathed in black clothes that offset his pallid skin. He fixes the viewer with a withering, eternal stare that seems to question their right to be there at all – an interesting sensation to explore in the context of an art fair, a famously status-conscious event.
