To make a sweeping generalization, art fairs can be quite overwhelming. If it in any way reflects the huge city it’s landed in, Frieze L.A. will be even more sprawling than most — it’s also going to be crammed with talent, reflecting the city’s vibrant and diverse art scene. Here, i-D presents our pick of the happenings you won’t want to miss.
Lisa Anne Auerbach’s Psychic Art Advisor (above)
LA-based Lisa Anne Auerbach is setting up shop at Frieze LA, although not in a conventional booth setting. The artist is merging two professions, Psychic and Art Advisor into one, offering clients insight and advice into their creative and commercial endeavors. While Auerbach aims to provide the most reliable intuition, “advisors can make no claims to correctly predict the future”. You can schedule appointments in person during regular fair hours.
Acid-Free Art Book Pop-Up Acid-Free is partnering up with Frieze LA to present BOOK MART, a temporary bookshop featuring 40+ publishers selling new and rare art book titles. BOOK MART will also have available a set of serigraphs by Galería Perdida, Masanao Hirayama and Stefan Marx. Proceeds from these serigraphs will be directed towards Acid Free’s upcoming Los Angeles Art Book Fair at Blum & Poe in November 2019.
Paul McCarthy’s Daddies Tomato Ketchup Inflatable
Paul McCarthy is a groundbreaking visual artist whose video installations, sculptures and performances uncover the intersections between politics, art, pop culture and history. On view on Paramount Studios’ Backlot, the towering Daddies Tomato Ketchup Inflatable will stand adjacent to a “skyscraper”, leading viewers to reckon with the bizarre hyperreality that the location sustains, and the blurred lines between sculpture and advertisement.
Tom Sachs Screening Paradox Bullets With Director Van Neistat & Narrator Werner Herzog
Tom Sachs, with Gagosian Gallery, present Paradox Bullets, a 2018 film starring the New York-based filmmaker and iconic artist Ed Ruscha on Friday, February 15th at 6:30 PM in the Paramount Theater. In addition, the film’s director, Van Neistat, will engage in a public conversation with the film’s narrator, German director Werner Herzog.
Rafa Esparza and Ron Athey in Conversation
Rafa Esparza’s artistry encompasses sculpture and performance, touching upon migration, colonization and identity. A native of Los Angeles, Esparza’s practice is rooted deep in the soil of Southern California, literally. His work can be often seen through his vast adobe-brick making, referencing a skill taught to him by his father and opening a dialogue about forging Brown and Queer artists communities who are expanding from the institution’s white walls. Joining him for a conversation is self-taught artist Ron Mathey. Mathey’s storied relationship with Southern California’s underground music scenes have influenced his work, delving into noise, body art, BDSM and martyrology. The conversation will be held at the Sherry Lansing Theater on Friday, February 15th, at 3:30 PM. The discussion between these two local legends should make for an informative and intriguing one.
Cécile B. Evan’s Film AGNES (the end is near)
Screening at the Paramount Theater on Saturday, February 16th at 11:30 AM, Frieze Films is presenting AGNES, a 22-minute film by Cécile B. Evans from 2014, which raise personal questions about “obsolescence, dependency and the future”. Evans, originally from Cleveland, now lives in London. Her work seeks to make sense of human emotion amidst the advances of technological apparatuses and the uncertainty that they bring. The films is presented in conjunction with the L.A. gallery Chateau Shatto and Galerie Emanuel Layr of Vienna.
Karon Davis Installation, The Game
The Game is Karon Davis’ reaction to the continual arrogance and ignorance that seeps from the current Administration’s stance on loose gun legislation that frequently kills students and educators. The installation’s name correlates to a hunter in the wild, and the ritualistic dance that the predator and prey perform. Davis’ practice takes into consideration mythology and theatricality. She is also one of the founders of Los Angeles’ Underground Museum.
Catharine Czudej’s Waiting For Jimmy Hoffa
In another instance making use of Paramount Studios’ iconic “New York City” backlot, artist Catharine Czudej confronts the bygone era when America was a unionized manufacturing powerhouse. In Waiting for Jimmy Hoffa, the South African-born artist has fabricated a caricatured and dirtied worker, suspenders and all, amidst the rigidity of the “Financial District”. If this scene seems odd, it’s on purpose. The piece fosters the same kind of absurdity that surrounds the lore of the Teamster leader’s disappearance.
Musical Matches: Zsela
MatchesFashion.com, the men and women’s retail fashion giant, is reconstructing it’s flagship store in London at Frieze Los Angeles to present a variety of talks and performances. Rising New York-singer Zsela, who recently just released her debut single “Noise”, will be performing an intimate live set at 5 Carlos Place on Saturday, February 16th at 5:30 PM.
Jenn Nkiru Film Screening, Black To Techno
Frieze and Gucci have partnered to premiere Black To Techno, the latest from Peckham-born filmmaker, Jenn Nkiru. The film is the last in a four-part series titled The Second Summer of Love. The series document the cultural effects that dance music, specifically acid house and techno, created in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Nkiru’s Black To Techno was shot in Detroit, the birthplace of the film’s namesake, and chronicles the pivotal role the genre and city continue to play since captivating the world thirty years ago. Says Nkiru, “Bound up in Techno are the particularities of a culture, people, energy, industrialism, geography, politics and future imaginings of a certain time: it is a sound of resistance, an underground sound created by young black folks in Detroit”. All four films of The Second Summer of Love will be shown consecutively on Sunday, February 17th, at 3:30 PM in the Paramount Theater.