After the deadly wildfires in Altadena and the Palisades, Los Angeles was reeling at the time of last year’s Frieze Los Angeles. But according to Christine Messineo, Frieze’s fair director for the Americas, the collective tenderness and spirit of community that emerged from the devastation has only grown stronger.
“There’s still a throughline between the way people showed up and treated the fair as a gathering place,” Messineo tells The Art Newspaper. “It was the first moment after the fires where people felt they had permission to feel joy, to reflect and to be in community. That sensibility is still here now.”
Messineo says the fair’s greatest strength is its plurality: from artists to curators, advisers to collectors and gallerists to non-profit leaders, people of all stripes descend upon the Santa Monica Airport to rub elbows and talk shop. “You can’t walk through the aisles without it becoming a little bit of a social moment,” Messineo says.
“The fair gets better every year,” says Emilia Yin, the owner of Make Room gallery, whose stand features paintings by Erica Mahiney—all of which sold during Thursday’s VIP preview, for prices between $5,500 and $35,000. One work was acquired by the Santa Monica Art Bank. Yin says the energy of the city changes when Frieze Week rolls around and people are eager to get back to business, especially after challenging seasons. “LA is a city where community matters a lot,” Liu adds.
Erica Mahinay’s Heat (2026) is one of ten paintings by the artist that sold from Make Room’s stand on Thursday Carlin Stiehl
Essence Harden, the co-curator of the current Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum (until 1 March), curated Frieze’s Focus sector. The local gallery Sea View has devoted its stand in the sector to Zenobia Lee, a recent University of California, Los Angeles graduate, and sold out during the VIP preview (works were priced between $7,000 and $20,000). One of her sculptures went to the California African American Museum and another was acquired through the so-called MAC3 collaboration between the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
“What stands out to me about Los Angeles is that we have a multitudinous world coming together,” Messineo adds. That spirit of openness is reflected in the pace and types of sales at the fair this year, with works by established, emerging and long-overlooked artists selling to local collectors, museums and institutions—and at least one fair owner.
In the fair’s opening hours, Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Mari Group, which acquired Frieze last year, walked into the Fort Gansevoort stand right at the fair’s main entrance and bought three figurative quilts by Yvonne Wells, an 87-year-old artist from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The entertainment and live events mogul, perhaps unsurprisingly, was taken with Wells’s renderings of three icons of stage and screen, acquiring her quilts depicting Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley for prices between $50,000 and $60,000 each. This is the New York gallery’s first time exhibiting at Frieze Los Angeles and Wells’s first time showing anywhere in Los Angeles.
“At 87 years old, Wells is receiving the international recognition her work has long deserved,” says Adam Shopkorn, Fort Gansevoort’s owner and founder.
Yvonne Wells’s quilt Marilyn Monroe (2001), sold by Fort Gansevoort © Yvonne Wells. Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort, New York
Bevy of blue-chip sales
A Frieze Los Angeles regular, David Zwirner, reported the biggest sale thus far as the VIP preview came to a close, with a 2016 work by the Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby being acquired by a European foundation for $2.8m. The gallery also sold a 2020 painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for $1.5m, four new paintings by recent signee Louis Fratino for prices between $35,000 and $75,000, a new work on paper and a painting by Lisa Yuskavage for a total of $460,000, and more.
White Cube sold three sculptures from its solo stand devoted to Antony Gormley, for a total take of at least £1.5m. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery reported more than a half-dozen sales from its group presentation, totalling more than $2m. Local powerhouse David Kordansky Gallery (which also has an outpost in New York) reported several sales led by a Jonas Wood still life of a bonsai for $600,000, as well as Mary Weatherford’s Sunrise, Venus (2026) for $300,000; all in all, the gallery reported more than $2.4m in sales.
Pace Gallery reported around $1.8m in sales during the preview, led by a 1983 painting by Jean Dubuffet that went for $475,000, and Emily Kam Kngwarray’s painting Transition (1990) for $450,000. The gallery also sold one sculpture and two works on paper by Robert Longo for prices ranging from $90,000 to $175,000, a Hank Willis Thomas sculpture for $40,000 and a Kiki Smith work on paper for $30,000, among others.
Gladstone reported at least $1.39m in sales, including a $700,000 Keith Haring sculpture, a large-scale painting by Ugo Rondinone for $260,000 and paintings by Frances Stark and Karen Kilimnik for $75,000 and $65,000, respectively. The gallery also sold multiple editions of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs in the range of $200,000 each and multiple paintings by Rachel Rose for $35,000 each.
Gagosian reported a “brisk” sales day during the preview, placing Ed Ruscha’s Heaven (1988) and Hot Sparks (2025), Frank Gehry’s Fish on Fire (2023), Alex Israel’s Paramount Pictures (2025) and new works by Jonas Wood and Mary Weatherford—all for undisclosed prices.
Hauser & Wirth devoted its stand to a solo presentation of paintings by the Portugal-based German artist Conny Maier, which had sold out by the end of the VIP preview (but did not disclose prices).
Sprüth Magers’s stand features eye-catching wallpaper and a towering camel by the late Los Angeles legend John Baldessari Carlin Stiehl
Almine Rech sold a painting by Ewa Juszkiewicz for a price in the range of $800,000 to $850,000, among more than a half-dozen works. Thaddaeus Ropac sold a 2022 painting by Alex Katz for $700,000, a 2025 David Salle painting for $280,000 and a Liza Lou painting for $200,000, among others. Tina Kim Gallery sold more than $800,000 worth of art during the preview, including two paintings by Maia Ruth Lee. Garth Greenan Gallery sold a painting by Howardena Pindell for $875,000 and a painting by Emmi Whitehorse for $150,000. Perrotin sold a painting by Bharti Kher in the range of $180,000 to $195,000, among other works.
Early in the day, Bay Area gallery Jessica Silverman sold a new painting by Hayal Pozanti for $75,000 lain butterfly-wing sculpture by Rebecca Manson for $65,000, among others. From a solo nook devoted to Beverly Fishman, the gallery placed five colourful wall sculptures for $25,000 each.
Sprüth Magers sales included notable Los Angeles artists, among them Barbara Kruger’s work on paper Untitled (Your misery loves company) (1985) for $95,000 and a 16mm colour film by local legend Kenneth Anger for $50,000. Lehmann Maupin sold two new paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist Calida Rawles, both in the range of $60,000 to $80,000. Lisson Gallery sold two works by the Los Angeles-based sculptor Kelly Akashi for $60,000 and $55,000, among others.
The New York-based Jane Lombard Gallery, participating in Frieze Los Angeles for the first time, sold works by Adam de Boer and Massinissa Selmani for a combined total of more than $20,000. The Frieze Impact Prize stand, devoted to drawings and wooden sculptures by Napoles Marty, was entirely sold out by the end of the VIP preview—another sign of a successful start for the organisers.
“I love looking outside and seeing all these people gathered on the picnic benches and sitting on the lawn,” Messineo says. “And that, to me, feels like we did it right following the fires. People were ready for it, and it feels that way again this year. It’s certainly energetic.”
