Joy in the City of Angels: Frieze LA Delivers Its Best Week Yet

Artist and writer Richelle Rich reports from the ground on a fair that surprised, delighted, and proved the doubters wrong.

Listen to this conversation in it’s entirety on the Seen Podcast.

There's a particular kind of energy that descends on Los Angeles once a year, during the week that Frieze takes over the city. For a metropolis better known for its film studios than its gallery openings, Art Week transforms LA into something that feels, briefly, gloriously, like one of the great international art capitals. For Richelle Rich, an artist based in the city, it's the highlight of her year.

"For me, it feels like, dare I say, a proper international city with a really international, vibrant, exciting art scene for that one week," Rich says. And this year, by her account, Frieze LA surpassed even its own high bar.

After the Fires: A City Ready to Celebrate

Last year's edition of Frieze LA carried an inescapable emotional weight. Held in the immediate aftermath of the devastating wildfires that tore through the region, the fair took on the character of a rallying cry, a statement of solidarity with LA's artist community. It was a success, but a bittersweet one.

This year felt different. "It was joyous," Rich says simply. "Objectively joyous." After a year of rebuilding and recovery, and against the backdrop of a turbulent national mood, the fair seemed to offer something the city needed: a collective exhale, a celebration, a reason to get out of the house and look at art.

The show itself leaned into its LA identity in ways that felt earned rather than kitschy. There were palm trees, including a towering installation by Jake Longstreth, nostalgic nods to old Hollywood, and the warm, poolside aesthetic that defines the city at its most iconic. Works by Larry Sultan reinforced that sense of place, grounding the international fair firmly in its surroundings.

Navigating the City (Yes, Including the Traffic)

Of course, this being Los Angeles, the week's logistics came with their own particular challenges. The city's notorious traffic means that attendees face real choices about which events to prioritise, and inevitably, some sacrifices get made.

This year saw an unusually rich spread of fairs running alongside Frieze. The long-established Felix Art Fair opened Wednesday evening as a curtain-raiser. Other fairs on offer included: Butter, the self-described "America's Equitable Fine Art Fair," which made its LA debut in Inglewood, The Other Art Fair and Show L.A.

Butter, which launched in Indiana in 2021, operates on a radically transparent model: 100% of profits go directly to artists, children under 18 attend free, and the organisation claims to have sold 1.2 million artworks since its founding. Rich didn't make it to Inglewood, the distance proved too much on a packed schedule, but reports from those who did were enthusiastic, and she was quick to flag Butter's exceptional merchandise as worth seeking out on its own merits.

"The tricky thing about Art Week in LA is you have to make choices," she acknowledges. "And sacrifices get made." But the fact that there was so much on offer that it was physically impossible to see everything? "That, to me, shows thriving. Like mega."

The Works That Stayed With Her

Ask Rich for her standout works from the week and she lights up, a cascade of names and moments that reveals an eye attuned equally to spectacle and to quiet beauty.

At Maureen Paley's booth, a small Gillian Wearing portrait stopped her in her tracks: a self-portrait of the artist reflected in the screen of a television, phone in hand, the layers of mediation and framing working in precise concert with Wearing's characteristically probing gaze. "The phone and then the TV and then the framing and the painting technique," Rich recalls. "It was just, yeah."

At Anat Ebgi's booth, a single small painting by Robert Russell, a dial telephone rendered with his trademark hyper-realistic precision, cut through in a way that his larger, showier works sometimes don't. "Sometimes it can feel like a trick," Rich admits of Russell's practice. "But this was just sort of... delicate. Whimsical."

She was also moved by a tower of broken pencil points by Shilpa Gupta at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, a fragile, difficult-to-photograph work that required a kind of courage to present in a fair environment. "That was gorgeous. It was such a brave thing to bring into a fair."

And at Richard Saltoun Gallery, abstract paintings by Romany Eveleigh, from a series called Oracle, provided what Rich describes as a moment of genuine stillness amid the noise. "They felt really exciting and new. In all of the noise and the shininess and the colour, these really thoughtful abstract paintings just made you stop. And think. And feel where you were."

The booth that won the unofficial crowd-favourite award, Rich suggests, was Ebony Patterson's immersive installation, artist-designed wallpaper transforming the entire space into something between a garden and a fever dream. "It rocked. It was a proper crowd-pleasing favourite and really beautifully made."

And then there was her own purchase: a Martin Parr photograph of an ice cream, acquired from Show LA at Rose Gallery. Given Rich's own longstanding project around ice cream, it was, she concedes with a laugh, practically mandatory.

British Galleries Showing American Energy

One theme emerged unprompted across Rich's highlights: the strength of British galleries. Maureen Paley, Richard Saltoun, and Hales all earned mentions, the latter for presenting work by young American painter Jordan Ann Craig, whose developing practice Rich found genuinely exciting. "The work's developing. I think she's a young painter. And yeah, you need to check it out."

One Quibble, and a Broader Point

If Rich had one criticism of the fair itself, it was practical: the lack of a comfortable space inside the tent where visitors could sit, have a coffee, and think. In the heat of a LA afternoon, being forced outside can break the contemplative spell that good art requires.

It's a minor note in an otherwise glowing assessment, and one that, arguably, speaks to the fair's success. When the main complaint is that you need somewhere to sit down and process everything you've seen, things are going well.

Does the Energy Last?

The perennial question about Frieze LA is whether it can sustain the art scene it momentarily conjures, whether one exceptional week translates into a year-round culture shift, or whether it evaporates the moment the tents come down.

Rich is cautious but hopeful. "The excitement, the momentum definitely lasts a long time," she says. "I think there are a lot of naysayers about Frieze coming to LA, like, is there a market for it, are we trying to create something that isn't really here? But I think: if you build it, they will come. And people showed up. And it sounds like they bought. And the work was incredible."

One word for Frieze LA 2025? Rich doesn't hesitate.

"Joy."

Richelle Rich is an LA-based artist. This piece is drawn from a conversation on The Seen Podcast.