There was lots of positive feedback to be heard in the aisles of this year’s Art LA fair, with dealers and buyers praising the selection of galleries, the art on view, and a venue that was generally considered much better than last year’s.

“Everything about the fair is great but the sales,” said L.A. and Berlin dealer Susanne Vielmetter, who nevertheless reported selling a few pieces at the fair, which ran January 23–25, among them two 2007 Valérie Favre paintings, both titled Lapine Universe and priced at $5,000.

Two years after reinventing itself at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with new leadership and an increase in stature, Art LA moved this year to a new home at the sprawling Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, which offers much larger booths in a grittier, more open space. In 2008, director Tim Fleming, with the help of L.A. dealer Daniel Hug (now artistic director of Art Cologne), worked to shore up the event’s small but smart roster of young, world-class galleries. This year, his focus was more on venue and collectors, but the exhibitor breakdown was essentially the same: Apart from a smattering of galleries from big U.S. cities like Chicago and New York, most of the 60-some exhibitors were either L.A.-based or international. Several London dealers who participated in 2008 elected not to come back, such as Herald St and Dicksmith, but their absence was more than made up for by a high turnout among German galleries, who were no doubt encouraged by Isabella Bortolozzi, a Berlin dealer on the selection committee.

Meyer Riegger of Berlin and Karlsruhe shared a booth with Klosterfelde of Berlin. Both galleries have strong relationships with L.A. collectors and institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum. Meyer Riegger sold a Miriam Cahn oil painting, Tiermensch (2004), for $15,000, and was also offering Jonathan Monks series of six works in spray paint and screenprint on canvas (And On The Seventh Day He Vanished, 2009) for $8,000 each.

“[The fair]’s quite slow,” said L.A. dealer David Kordansky, who reported selling one untitled Mark Flores installation from 2009 for $10,000, but not another, which, priced at $25,000, was the most expensive work in his booth. “However, considering the market situation, the turnout is good.”

Kordansky said he is probably going to the Art Basel satellite fair Liste in June, but is otherwise putting fairgoing on hold until he gets a better sense of the market. “I pulled out of the Armory,” he said, adding that he has “deep connections with New York collectors.”

Joel Mesler of L.A.’s Mesler&Hug (previously Daniel Hug Gallery) also reported high turnout, particularly at the fair’s opening-night benefit for the beleaguered Museum of Contemporary Art. “I felt all Los Angeles collectors came out last night,” he said. “They took the fair seriously and engaged themselves.”  

Optimism ran high at Mesler’s booth, one of the few reporting strong sales, mostly from L.A. collectors and the German collector Herbert Kopp. Among the works that sold were an untitled assemblage of autobiographical pictures by Brendan Fowler, a young L.A. artist and musician, that will be at the New Museums show “Younger Than Jesus” this spring. It went to L.A. collector John Morace for $3,500.

Other L.A. collectors seen at the fair included Cliff and Mandy Einstein, Dean Valentine, Michael Ovitz, and Blake Byrne. New York was represented by such collectors as Jill Kraus and Susan and Michael Hort, who spent a lot of time adding to their collections and arranging studio visits while in town.  

Many galleries presented solo shows, including L.A.’s Blum & Poe, which had a captivating suite of Hirsch Perlmans work. Perlman, who pretty much vanished after reaching a career high point in the mid-’90s, is appearing in a much-anticipated show of L.A. artists at the Hammer Museum this spring, and so it seems this a good time to dust off his work: The booth’s centerpiece, Shoving, from 1994, bore an asking price of $30,000.

Other galleries staged quasi-curated group shows, such as L.A. dealer Tom Solomon, whose sophisticated collection of “cut” works included mostly prints, paintings, or collages from Keith Sonnier, Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta Clark, and younger artists like Nathan Hylden, Krysten Cunningham, and Brad Eberhard.

L.A. gallery Patrick Painter had a blue-chip display featuring works by Mike Kelley, Julian Schnabel, Jim Shaw, and Peter Saul. Among the highlights was a Kelley installation of 15 prints of newspaper clippings, Timeless / Authorless (1995), from which some of the settings for the artist’s video project Day Is Done (2005) were derived. The fifth in an edition of 5, the installation was priced at $125,000 and was still unsold at the end of fair’s second day.

Sarah Walzer, a director at L.A. and Berlin gallery Peres Projects, reported selling a Dan Attoe painting, Accretion #39 (The World Is Expanding — You Don't Know Anything) (2008), to a private collection in Europe for $40,000 before Art LA. Meanwhile, she said that everyone at the fair was looking to make a deal. “Collectors are bargaining all the time. If they like something, they automatically ask for a discount.”

When asked about the effects of the recession, many dealers ARTINFO spoke to said that the L.A. market is safe because the city’s collectors are more invested in Hollywood — which is doing well — than in Wall Street. (Indeed, several show biz–types were seen cruising the fair, including Neil Patrick Harris, Dennis Hopper, and Keanu Reeves.) But other dealers seemed skeptical of any connection between investments in Hollywood and in art.

“Movies and TV are immediate investments,” said Walzer. “With art you put money in something you believe in, but the economical return is not immediate. Ultimately, it’s only about pleasure.”