LOS ANGELES — We’ve made it to a different LA Artwork Week! I went into this 12 months feeling a bit apprehensive. Usually, Felix — the truthful that displays artworks inside poolside cabanas on the Hollywood Roosevelt Lodge, on view now via Sunday, February 23 — is way more relaxed and lighthearted than Frieze, the week’s centerpiece present. However with artists, gallerists, and collectors nonetheless within the midst of restoration from the Palisades and Eaton fires, I couldn’t assist however surprise: Would this foolish truthful be cloaked in a somber ambiance?
On opening day, hearth reduction was instantly foregrounded by an exhibition and silent public sale assembled by the newly shaped collective LA Ayuda Community, a collective of artists and artwork staff who’ve been offering help to fireplace victims. Over 150 native artists donated new works, every priced at simply $500 apart from a small choice by high-profile native artists together with Rafa Esparza, Beatriz Cortez, and noé olivas, which have been being offered in a silent public sale to profit these impacted.
“The show was called Foundations, with the idea that nothing is built from one stone,” artist Debra Scacco, one of many collective’s organizers, instructed me on opening day. “So we invited artists to make a stone.”
Al Freeman, “Muskoka Day Lily” (2024), offered by 56 Henry
Mrs. gallery’s presentation with works by Megan Bogonovich, Oona Brangam-Snell, Hilliary Gabryel, Rose Nestler, and Nevena Prijic
Artists have been allowed to interpret this project very loosely, so the array of objects, displayed on rows of low benches, spans all the pieces from painted rocks and watercolor drawings to sound installations. Amongst them is Emily Müller’s “The Museum of Stones” (2025), a tiny gallery displaying small ore rocks on pedestals or mounted with wire. Camilla Taylor, who misplaced her house and studio within the hearth, contributed “Ear Fragment” (2025), a ceramic fragment within the form of an ear protruding from a picket body.
Taylor’s work can also be being exhibited on the truthful by the Kyiv- and New York-based Voloshyn Gallery, which determined to function nearly solely Los Angeles artists although it doesn’t at present symbolize any of them.
“We decided to change our presentation to show local-based artists to support the community,” mentioned gallery proprietor Julia Voloshyna.
Left to proper: Cathy Akers, “Sunset Vase” (2024), proven by Voloshyn Gallery; Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka, “Noguchi Plaza Noren” (2023), proven by Patel Brown; and element from Maggie Ellis, “Purgatory Beach” (2024), proven by Charles Moffett
Voloshyna reached out to the ceramicist Cathy Akers, who evacuated her house throughout the Eaton Fireplace and was lucky sufficient to return safely. Collectively, they curated a bunch present centering Taylor’s drawings and glass sculptures of staircases; Aker’s exuberant vases, a few of which function nude ladies as handles; and Lara Pleasure Evans’s c-prints of mud pots embedded in custom-made resin frames, amongst different works.
Other than these extra apparent references to the fires, Felix was simply as cheerful as ever — although it did really feel much less crowded than previous editions — and the works on show have been a full-tilt into the realm of surrealism. This levity felt purposeful: Not solely would the truthful not be marred by tragedy, however it could even be pointedly absurd, reminding its attendees of artwork’s potential to specific pleasure.
Narsiso Martinez, Sweet Goals” (2025) and “My sister and I, Family Tree” (2025), offered by Charlie James Gallery
Work by Kate Lewis offered by Sobering Galerie
I significantly cherished the main points within the pastoral work of William Schaeuble, who was the only artist exhibited by the Chicago-based gallery Povos. Throughout the works that make up his solo presentation, titled The place is everybody going?, an Elvis impersonator stands on prime of a podium, tiny vehicles are burning within the countryside, and canines are barking all over the place, together with in timber.
A room collectively shared by Lengthy Story Brief and Marinaro galleries featured a portray by Jeremy Olson, “Anesthetica” (2025), wherein aliens huffed some sort of nuclear inexperienced laughing fuel. It’s unusual to see Olson’s skillful portray, particularly putting in its lusciously rendered carpets, portraying sci-fi stoners as an alternative of haughty wealthy individuals. This room additionally showcased many work by Hannah Murray, together with “Soeurs Vertes” (2024), a vibrant piece dominated by shades of pink and blue wherein two expectant moms sit poolside of their final childless Sizzling Lady Summer season. This scene isn’t essentially surreal, however I can’t bear in mind the final time I noticed pregnant ladies so superbly rendered in modern artwork, so it could as properly be a fantasy.
Jeremy Olson, “Anesthetica” (2025)
Rocío García, “El brindis” (2025), offered by El Apartamento
Work by Jim Thompson offered by Charlie James Gallery
Amongst all of the mythological references, I stored noticing one determine haunting work and drawings: Devil. I’m unsure if the affect got here from the fires or the latest takeover of the Trump administration, however the total message appeared to be that the world goes to hell. I spied horned creatures in Luciano Maia’s “Sem título da série Onironauta” (2024), offered by the LA- and Milan-based gallery M+B, and Rick Bartow’s “Bull Man Laughs” (2011), proven by LA’s Timothy Hawkinson Gallery. In a show by Charles Moffett gallery in New York Metropolis, pointy-earned demons copulated in entrance of vibrant bonfires all through Maggie Ellis’s oil work. And in El Apartamento, a gallery based mostly in Havana and Madrid, a portray by Rocío García, “El brindis” (2025), confirmed a furry wolf-like creature toasting and interlocking legs together with his date, the scene bathed in blood-red hues.
Not everybody was ready to bop with the satan, nonetheless. In a presentation by the NYC gallery Europa, Milly Skellington protected the sales space with “HOLYWATER” (2024), the phrase hand-carved into pink quartz within the model of the Hollywood signal. We have to sprinkle that sacred component all throughout town, dousing any wildfire ember that is still.
Milly Skellington, “HOLYWATER’” (2024)
Jongwan Jang, “Tropical reading” (2024), offered by Foundry Seoul
