Frieze Los Angeles has announced a highly anticipated slate of on-site programming for its fifth edition, which opens Feb. 29. Following the 2023 announcement of the fair’s largest gallery program to date, this year’s menu of on-site artist-led programming—curated for a second time by Art Production Fund’s executive director Casey Fremont—digs into Los Angeles's cultural topography, presenting a selection of works that reflect its expansiveness.
This year, Fremont and Art Production Fund will present “Set Seen,” a program inspired by the role Hollywood set designers played in camouflaging part of the Santa Monica Airport, where the fair currently sets up shop, during World War ll. Included in the exhibition are large-scale works by Sharif Farrag, Derek Fordjour, Pippa Garner, Matt Johnson, Cynthia Talmadge, and Ryan Flores—a group of artists who take the city’s ecologies, cultures, and architecture as their subject matter.
This emphasis on hyperlocal concepts of place—as well as the blurring of lines between art and artifice, industry and creativity—are central elements of the Frieze Los Angeles program this year. The show, supported by Maestro Dobel Tequila, will be accessible to the public and free of charge, and works by Talmadge and Johnson will remain on view through April 7.
The grounds of the Santa Monica Airport will also play host to pop-ups from several key Los Angeles-based art and community organizations including AMBOS, which supports bi-national artists; Gallery 90220, a platform for underrepresented artists; GYOPO, a collective of diasporic Korean creatives; Los Angeles Nomadic Division, offering free public art commissions; People’s Pottery Project, providing job training for formerly incarcerated women, trans, and non-binary individuals; and Reparations Club, an independent, Black-owned concept bookstore.
“It is truly an honor to be a part of this,” said Fremont of the programming effort. “Through their support of the program, Frieze and The City of Santa Monica demonstrate their commitment to public art and making art widely accessible.”
