Frieze Los Angeles is back, poised to take the city by storm once again. Its inaugural run in LA at Paramount Studios in 2019 was greeted with wild enthusiasm by art aficionados and newbies alike. One can only hope a literal storm doesn’t follow in its wake as it did last year, making its unique and truly memorable activation of the studio’s New York City movie-set backlot difficult to experience with gusto. 

Frieze will once again capture the hearts of art lovers during Valentine’s Day weekend, from February 14-16 2020, but the international art fair hailing from London will kick off its robust slate of related programs on Monday February 10 at The Getty Museum with a benefit party for the Art for Justice Fund (last year, Mark Bradford’s limited edition print helped raise $1m for the fund). 

Here are some highlights you won’t want to miss during Frieze Los Angeles 2020.

Try to spot all 20 Questions by iconic artist Barbara Kruger as the centerpiece of the Frieze LA 2020 campaign. Her provocative questions blur the line between advertising and art in true Kruger signature fashion. Hint: look for new, green and white branding everywhere from lamp post banners to billboards. 

The Paramount Studios Backlot will host 16+ Frieze Projects curated by LACMA’s Rita Gonzalez and Vincent Price Art Museum’s Director Pilar Tompkins Rivas. A globalized selection of artists considering LA’s relation to the Americas will draw upon the unavoidable political context in which we live. Durational performances, dance, video and more will examine the movie studio as an engine of representation, powerful especially in LA as the global seat of the entertainment industry.
– Patrisse Cullors, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter and leader of the Reform LA Jails initiative, will present a collective endurance performance piece a number of times over the weekend. The interactive performance considers the reparative nature of dance (specifically, the electric slide) to reclaim and hold space. 
– Gary Simmons will re-stage his historic performance work from 1993, Backdrop Project. By taking Polaroids of passers-by and offering a copy to his subjects, he considers the dynamics of image circulation and agency.
– Tavares Strachan will interrogate Hollywood’s influence on constructed narratives with a new neon sculpture.
– Artist-run and non-profit organizations like Ooga Booga, grantLOVE, and Pretend Plants and Flowers will make up a lively street fair environment, building on creative enterprises presented last year and encouraging accessible ways to support the arts. 

New in the Galleries tent for 2020 is Focus LA, showcasing LA’s emerging art scene by subsidizing the fair’s platform for LA galleries that have been open for less than 15 years. Keep an eye out for Various Small Fires’ presentation of new paintings by Calida Rowles of African-Americans submerged in water. Religious rituals and futile attempts to wash away America’s sins that continue to weigh on and abuse the black body are hard to ignore in her loaded imagery. 

2020 will present the first ever Los Angeles Film Award, a new initiative to foster creativity and support artists presented by Deutsche Bank, Frieze, and Ghetto Film School. The program offered a platform and development program to 10 young filmmakers who were challenged to create short films over 4 months about the influence of LA’s art, culture, and social landscape. The films will be screened at the fair and the $10k prize winner will be chosen by Doug Aitken, Hamza Walker, and Sam Taylor-Johnson during Frieze LA. 

Out of town, new in town – or just getting to know the art scene here? Don’t worry. Frieze LA Executive Director and ForYourArt Founder Bettina Korek has a solution. Inspired by the Clueless quote, “you can get anywhere in 20 minutes,” an exquisite corpse map of LA was created by 20 local artists with 10 different routes through the city identified for maximum art-viewing pleasure. 

Frieze Film & Talks 2020 was organized in tandem with one of Asia’s top curators, Venus Lau. This year, the theme of “in-betweens” was chosen to suit the host city of Los Angeles as a meeting place for culture and a site of visual cross-pollination. Its international scope of screenings cover diverse selections from a cyberpunk classic to a metaphorical zombie film. Don’t miss a conversation between author Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates and artist Calida Rawles about topics related to Coates’ new novel The Water Dancer, moderated by LACMA curator Christine Y. Kim on Saturday (schedule yet to be released). 

Advance tickets for access to the Galleries tent during the fair’s weekend run have already sold out – so keep an eye on frieze.com and don’t sleep on the next opportunity to snag a few for yourself and friends when the moment arrives. Program Only tickets, offering access to the backlot and curated selections including Frieze Projects and Frieze Film & Talks, are still available at time of publishing. 

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