Harry Gould Harvey IV, “Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread” (2025) at Submit-Truthful (all photographs Sigourney Schultz/Hyperallergic)
LOS ANGELES — Yesterday, I bypassed Frieze’s VIP opening and headed to 2 of town’s different artwork gala’s as a substitute: the Submit-Truthful and the Different Artwork Truthful. As the previous’s identify suggests, the brand new child on the honest block addresses the exclusivity and privatization of typical artwork gala’s by providing low-cost entry whereas internet hosting its 29 galleries and venture areas in Santa Monica’s repurposed Artwork Deco-style submit workplace. Later within the day, the Different Artwork Truthful opened for its thirteenth version in Los Angeles, presenting work by 140 unbiased artists who took heart stage and engaged with guests who may buy items instantly. Refreshingly, the one white cubes to be discovered had been floating in craft cocktails.
Sarah M. Rodriguez, “Cup of Everything, Germ of Nothing” (2024), introduced by Babst gallery
At Submit-Truthful, galleries occupied partitions alongside the area’s cavernous picket corridors. On the sales space of PPOW, artist Harry Gould Harvey IV accomplished a hero’s journey with 4 new large-scale works on view. Harvey transforms easy supplies — matte board and located wooden from deserted mansions — into ritual objects meant to translate esoteric religious literature into sources of private reflection. I used to be significantly drawn to “Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread” (2025), which Harvey defined has a direct tie to Los Angeles. On the work’s righthand facet, he included a Xerox switch of late artist Wallace Berman’s “Untitled” (c. 1967), a grid of photographs of a hand holding a transistor radio superimposed with symbolical mass-media photographs. Harvey’s tribute to the pivotal West Coast artist takes the type of a tombstone meant to imbue the work together with his optimistic spirit.
Guests circled Dylan Spaysky’s three-dimensional hanging works, introduced by Good Climate gallery.
Guests circled Dylan Spaysky’s three-dimensional hanging works at Good Climate gallery’s presentation, admiring their a number of layers of framed mirrors backlit by evening lights with uncovered extension cords. Spaysky attracts inspiration from cel animation, a method popularized by Walt Disney animators within the Thirties and a callback to Los Angeles’s movie historical past. Every mirror is embossed with overlapping characters or units from these early movies, reconsidering their contextual and literal building. Look intently at “1961 mirror” (2025), and also you may spot Pongo and Perdita from the animated movie One Hundred and One Dalmatians — launched within the art work’s titular yr.
Harlesden Excessive Road’s sales space displaying Angela Anh Nguyen’s gun-tufted textiles (left) and a Joseph Jones cat portray introduced by Ehrlich Steinberg (proper)
In the meantime, hanging from the partitions and adorning the flooring at Harlesden Excessive Road had been Angela Anh Nguyen’s gun-tufted textiles. The LA-based artist makes use of tufting — which she coincidentally realized by way of YouTube tutorials — to ponder the reflexive nature of American tradition wars exacerbated by on-line media. “I’ve been reading a lot of theory lately” (2023), for one, amusingly depicts a determine having misplaced a battle to a fallen bookcase awash in titles akin to Das Kapital by Karl Marx, White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, and A E book of Widespread Prayer by Joan Didion. As I meandered by way of the remainder of the shows, the ambiance was cheerful and curious, aided by the lengthy stretches of empty area that allowed for respiratory room between the artwork (and the guests).
Jess Lin (left) and Eden Miller (proper)
After a uncommon traffic-free drive again from Santa Monica, I equipped for the opening evening of the Different Artwork Truthful in Atwater Village. I had beautiful conversations with a number of artists on the buzzing honest, together with Eden Miller, who debuted work of liminal, dreamlike scenes with seraphim taking the form of blue-toned pelicans and winged fish. Down the corridor, I encountered Jess Lin’s works exploring her Taiwanese-American identification as an expat who grew up overseas. Her newer work, amongst them “Marina Martinis” and “Taroko Bao” (each 2024), unexpectedly mix childhood meals with Singaporean and Taiwanese cityscapes to create surreal but scrumptious compositions.
“The Play Pen,” curated by artist STVNDID at The Different Artwork Truthful
Along with the artist cubicles, the entrance room featured a two-person present: Within the Land of Gods and Monsters, curated by Feia Studio’s Thomas Martinez Pilnik and Jake Cavallo, who not too long ago raised cash for artists impacted by the January wildfires. Anna Marie Tendler, creator of Males Have Known as Her Loopy (2024), additionally held pop-up portrait images periods, whereas native artist Judy Baca debuted a mural titled “The Great Wall of Los Angeles” (2025) and artist STVNDID’s “The Play Pen” inspired guests to color in an interactive area.
Each the Different Artwork Truthful and Submit-Truthful are billed as “alternative” reveals — another choice, maybe much less stodgy, outdoors of the blue-chip circuit. Nonetheless you select to label them, although, these gala’s shared an air of full of life jubilation as group members got here collectively to assist the true stars of the present: artists.
