Inside Los Angeles Art Week 2026: Frieze, Felix, and the Industry’s Expanding Cultural Landscape
Los Angeles has always been known for making a scene, but during LA Art Week the spectacle and fantasy of the art world take center stage. In recent years, LA has quietly solidified its status as a global art capital: A wave of blue-chip galleries has opened West Coast outposts; collectors increasingly split their time between coasts; and institutions such as Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, and David Zwirner, among others, have expanded their reach. Now in its seventh edition, Frieze Los Angeles—the week’s main art fair, held at the Santa Monica Airport—has become a cornerstone of that momentum, hosting more than 100 international and local galleries, and anchoring a celebration of art that stretches into all corners of the City of Angels.
Of course, LA Art Week’s highlights extend well beyond the art fairs, with fashion firmly in the mix. On Wednesday, February 25, designer Sarah Staudinger and her eponymous brand Staud hosted a penthouse cocktail party at Chateau Marmont alongside Staudinger’s husband Ari Emanuel, whose company includes Frieze in its portfolio—underscoring how intertwined the city’s cultural machinery has become. Attended by stars including Rachel Sennott, Winnie Harlow, and Orlando Bloom, the evening centered a limited-edition Staud Tommy Bag created with painter Merikokeb Berhanu, whose work is on view at the fair with James Cohan, showing at the Felix Art Fair. The collaboration highlighted how seamlessly art and luxury now circulate during the week’s events.
During LA Art Week—held this year from February 25 to March 1—the city activates in unexpected ways: A former airport is turned into a luxury art fair; a 99-cent store is reborn as a gallery; a post office is reimagined as a space for international galleries; and artworks are installed poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. High polish and improvisation coexist here, reflecting a scene that thrives on both glamour and experimentation.
Opening day at Frieze was predictably well-attended, drawing a cross-section of Los Angeles locals, East Coasters, collectors, artists, and cultural figures. Curator and Real Housewives of New York star Racquel Chevremont moved through the aisles, while actors François Arnaud, Timothy Olephant, and Emma Watson were spotted among the crowd, as was dealer and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch and curator Kim Heirston. The dress code ranged from tailored suiting to more eccentric, artist-forward looks, setting the tone for a preview that felt both polished and distinctly West Coast. For some longtime attendees, the white tent and shuttle rides recalled Frieze’s earlier Randall’s Island days in New York, though the California setting carries its own atmosphere. Several dealers reported strong early sales, reinforcing the fair’s continued momentum.
“My experience at Frieze so far has been really nice,” said Sissòn, an LA-based artist, of the fair’s energy. “I got to see some homies’s work. I saw a few beautiful pieces…I also want to support young and emerging artists. That’s essential, because without that there is no Frieze, there is no art, and there is no us.”
Below, discover the most exciting booths, the best exhibits, and the favorite beyond-the-fair features from LA Art Week 2026.
Among the Frieze Booths
Company Gallery, based in New York, presented a solo booth at F13 featuring ten works by the painter Sergio Miguel. “The fair reception overall has been very positive,” said Sascha Lo, an associate director at the gallery. “Compared to Frieze New York, this fair feels more intimate. People are able to really spend time with the work, and that creates a revitalized energy.”
Miguel’s presentation was among Frieze’s most striking. Drawing on 17th- and 18th-century techniques, his show centered a painting of a single bull, which read less as pastoral reference and more as a study in controlled power. The rich surfaces and deliberate brushwork give the work a weight that immediately commands attention. A surrounding suite of nine paintings featuring young women and girls in pairs introduces a more nuanced tension, suggesting intimacy and negotiation in equal measure. In a week driven by spectacle, the booth stood out for its composure and clarity.
At Jeffrey Deitch’s booth at B26, LA-based ceramicist Sharif Farrag commanded attention. His presentation drew on the visual language of his hometown, incorporating local vegetation and fauna into intricate, multi-panel compositions. Rooted in painting and drawing traditions, the ceramics extended across the walls, expanding the booth into a fully immersive environment.
“I love being here,” Deitch said. “There’s something unique about Frieze LA. Everybody comes here, the collectors, the museum people, and you don’t have the same situation in New York. It feels like a big party.”
He continued, “We like to feature important emerging Los Angeles artists like Sharif. The price points are accessible, between $14,000 and $35,000, so people can buy on the spot. The reception has been very good. MAC3 acquired one piece, and another museum has already placed a reserve. Ceramics have such a strong tradition in Los Angeles, and a lot of young artists are really interested in it.” MAC3, the Mohn Art Collective, brings together the Hammer Museum, LACMA, and MOCA in a shared acquisition initiative supporting contemporary artists in Los Angeles. With Farrag’s work entering that collection, the artist is not only riding the momentum of Frieze but helping define the future of the city’s museum landscape.
Another standout booth came from the Rome- and London-based Richard Saltoun Gallery, which presented a tightly edited pairing of path-breaking abstractionists Romany Eveleigh and Bice Lazzari. Amid the visual density of the fair, Eveleigh’s work felt strikingly restrained. Working between Rome and Paris in the 1970s, she developed a pared-back language of marks and symbols that reads today as both minimal and quietly modern. The paintings hover between high design and introspection, offering stillness amongst the excess of LA.
Finally, Nazarian / Curcio, in booth A13, presented a focused selection, including works by artist Naama Tsabar, who incorporates sound into her sculptural practice. Sheets of felt were transformed with piano strings and tuning pegs, turning soft material into playable instruments. Installed with amplifiers and open to interaction, the works shift in both form and pitch as the strings are adjusted, making them part-instrument, part-installation—and distinctly suited to a fair that thrives on movement and energy.
Inside the Felix Art Fair
Poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the Felix Art Fair has taken place for the past eight years. Built in 1929, the hotel helped define Hollywood’s golden era, and the Tropicana Pool—painted by David Hockney in 1988—carries its own mythology. According to hotel lore, Hockney completed the mural in a matter of hours using a broom-attached brush. Today, that same setting serves as the backdrop for galleries transforming hotel rooms and cabanas into exhibition spaces over the fair’s five-day run.
“I have been going to Felix for many years,” said Renée Reizman, a local artist, writer, and educator. “Usually preview day is busier, and it’s nice to see the fair when it’s calmer and you can actually look at the art. I’m noticing a lot of works on paper this year, smaller drawings and paintings that feel more attainable.”
New York gallery DIMIN made its Felix debut with a tightly curated presentation featuring artists Emily Coan, Michelle Im, Elena Redmond, Willie Stewart, Stephen Thorpe, Kelli Vance, and Ye Zhu. Vance’s paintings stood out amongst the group for their lush surfaces and charged domestic scenes, depicting women cutting cakes, tying bows, and performing intimate gestures. Their manicured nails become focal points, adding tension to familiar interiors and hinting at commentary on femininity and control.
For DIMIN founder Robert Dimin, presenting at Felix marked a milestone. “The energy on day one outperformed my expectations,” he said. “It was crowded with collectors and curators. You couldn’t move. The energy was fierce. It felt like something our art world really needed right now.”
LA-based gallery Feia also made its debut at Felix in cabana 110. Founded by the husband duo Thomas Martinez Pilnik and Jake Cavallo, the gallery staged a solo exhibition by Long Beach–based artist Charles Hickey while simultaneously activating the cabana with a group show of more than ten artists. Hickey created new paintings and handcrafted lamps incorporating 3D-pen elements, paint, and collage. The works explore memory, attention, and time, balancing craft with conceptual depth.
“For a brand-new gallery building a space from the ground up in Northeast Los Angeles, participating in Felix felt like something distant we were trying to manifest,” Pilnik said. “To have sold out Charles’s solo booth on the first day has been surreal.”
Paris-based Brigitte Mulholland Gallery returned to Felix for its second edition with a globally minded presentation, emphasizing material experimentation. Irish artist Emma Roche’s Whatcha Doing Again (2026), on view in cabana 114, quietly disrupted expectations of painting. Roche extruded strands of acrylic paint and knitted them together, transforming a fluid medium into something tactile and constructed. From a distance, it reads as textile; up close, the surface reveals its painterly origins.
Local gallery ATLA, debuting in room 1204, bridged Los Angeles and Japan with a group show of 10 artists, eight of which are from Japan. Among the standouts was Yuka Mori, a former dancer working in the Nihonga tradition. Her mineral-pigment paintings carry a hushed, dreamlike atmosphere that lingers beyond the room.
Felix also launched a new podcast hosted by fair co-founder Dean Valentine and art journalist Janelle Zara. Featuring guests including investor Jarl Mohn and artists Frances Stark and Joey Terrill, the series reinforces the fair’s emphasis on dialogue as much as commerce.
Beyond the Main Fairs
The boutique art fair ENZO debuted in Echo Park as an alternative option, housed inside a 5,000-square-foot 1920s warehouse at 1634 W Temple Street. The presentation brought together ten New York galleries and included performances and artist talks through February 28. Standouts included Margot Samel and Magenta Plains.
In Santa Monica, Post-Fair occupied a converted post office, positioning itself as a more accessible counterpoint to larger fairs, with $12 tickets and lower participation costs. Post-Fair brought together galleries from New York, London, and Japan, each operating with a strong curatorial identity rather than a blue-chip checklist. The fair resisted the typical art-market sprawl, favoring tightly conceived presentations across sculpture, drawing, and intimate works that reward close looking.
Among the standouts was Post Times, the New York–based Chinatown gallery that has quietly built a reputation for sharp, conceptually driven programming and an eye for painters who feel both timely and formally rigorous.
For Post-Fair, Post Times presented LA-based painter Andrew Chapman. “Post Times at Post-Fair just has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” said gallery owner Broc Blegen. “It’s my favorite fair in LA, and it’s in a beautiful venue.”
The Julia Stoschek Foundation also made its U.S. debut at LA Art Week with a multi-floor exhibition at the Variety Arts Theater, featuring work by Marina Abramović, Arthur Jafa, Anne Imhof, Jordan Wolfson, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Lu Yang—another sign that LA’s art scene continues to gain international weight.
One of the most talked-about off-site moments was the takeover of a former 99 Cents Only store on Wilshire Boulevard. Framed as an “artist flea,” the installation brought together artists Barry McGee, Gary Baseman, Tom Franco, and more than 100 additional artists influenced by graffiti and underground culture. The project became one of the week’s most unexpected gathering points.
LA Art Week can feel like a fever dream. Between converted airport hangars, 1960s-style cabanas, relentless California sun, and the ocean just beyond view, it often seems detached from the machinery of the art market. Deals unfold in linen and sunglasses; conversations about institutional acquisitions happen steps from a hotel pool.
But beneath the cinematic glow, each fair of the week offers a distinct entry point into the art world’s ecosystem. Some project prestige and authority; others spotlight younger galleries taking curatorial risks. Together, they map the layered infrastructure of how art is financed, circulated, and validated in LA and beyond. Seen in tandem, the week’s events become less about spectacle and more about structure—revealing not only the headline players, but the quieter figures who keep the system running.