LA Art: A Fair With Focus

NEW YORK—Blum & Poe and ACME are at the Armory. Walter Maciel Gallery is showing at Pulse. Bonelli Contemporary is doing Scope. With Los Angeles galleries of all sizes represented in many fairs this week, a fair dedicated (almost) exclusively to L.A. galleries may seem unnecessary. But for the third year running, the LA Art fair has set up shop in the Altman Building, on 18th Street between Chelsea and the Flatiron district, and on opening day today, despite spare attendance, galleries already reported steady sales, which many dealers attributed to the fair’s near-cult appeal among collectors.

LA Art debuted in 2006 with fewer than ten exhibitors. Last year it doubled its size and added a few international galleries to its roster, but it has scaled down somewhat this year to include 15 exhibitors — 14 from Los Angeles and one from Mexico — and the refrain from nearly every booth is that the pointedly small scale is as big a draw for collectors as the Los Angeles focus.

“It’s a very manageable fair,” said Marc Selwyn, who with Shoshana and Wayne Blank of Shoshana Wayne Gallery founded the fair in 2006. “People enjoy it more, and it’s great to have a snapshot of what’s happening in L.A. all at one fair.” What’s happening at Selwyn’s booth is a bold painting by Chris Dorland that is part of a series his Chicago dealer, Rhona Hoffman, will show next month. Still wet when the fair opened, the bold oil on linen cobbles together smeared architectural images in a composition that channels a Warhol car crash. It was still available as of this writing for $6,500. Equally moody, but more understated, are Selwyn’s several works by Paris-based Canadian artist Paul P. The smoky watercolors of young dandies and Venetian architecture ranged from $2,800 to $8,000.

“I’m always extremely successful,” said Selwyn of the L.A.-themed enterprise. “Last year I sold virtually everything in the booth, and I’ve sold to museums every time — museums in New York and in other parts of the country.”

Bennett Roberts, one of the organizers of this year’s fair, also had reason to boast by Thursday afternoon. At the Roberts & Tilton booth, two of Cincinnati artist Jimmy Baker’s glossy oil-and-resin Portraits of Unlawful Combatants had sold in the opening minutes of the preview, and a large Kehinde Wiley, as well as works by Titus Kaphar, Ai Yamaguchi, and Noah Davis, all went in the first few hours. “There aren’t a lot of people, but somehow the fair has already been more than worthwhile,” said Roberts.

Also at Roberts and Tilton, a large painting by Becca Mann titled Haunted House echoes the playfully dark mood running throughout the fair. It was snapped up for $14,000 early in the day. Born and based in Los Angeles, Mann is in good company in a show where many dealers chose to bring hometown artists. Though Roberts, for his part, lauded other exhibitors’ decisions to present a consistently international group of artists, adding, “If you go to a fair and every gallery is showing L.A. artists, it’s going to be bad.”

Over at Richard Heller’s booth, another L.A. representative finds common ground with a northern neighbor: Mel Kadel, who is in her mid-30s, repeats the figure of a young girl in whimsical, ambiguously menacing fairy-tale scenes on paper, all priced in the $3,500 range. On the booth’s next wall, 13 Marcel Dzama works on paper bearing the Canadian artist’s signature figures mix cute and creepy to the tune of $4,000 each; three had already sold by the end of the preview.

Heller, who typically shows at Pulse Miami, likes the low-key feel of the L.A.-focused fair. “It’s fun to have a little camaraderie,” he said. “Getting all these Los Angeles people in a small show together makes it feel more like an exhibition than a fair.”

What definitely feels like a fair is Mary Goldman’s booth, which overflows with multiples of cardboard signs related to L.A. artist Alejandro Diaz’s series of 2003 New York performances, including Enchiladas at the Plaza—for which he dressed as a mariachi and carried a sign that read “available for speaking roles in a major motion picture” in front of the landmark hotel. The hand-lettered works bear slogans such as “Marfa 1,600 Miles” and “Mexican Wallpaper” and are on offer for a bargain hunter’s $99.99.