Highlights of Frieze Los Angeles 2026

Larry Bell with the author, Lita Barrie at Frieze Los Angeles

By LITA BARRIE March 7th, 2026

The seventh edition of Frieze Los Angeles featured 95 galleries from 22 countries at Santa Monica Airport campus. The fair attracted more than 32,000 visitors from over 45 countries; with representatives from 160 museums and institutions along with top artists, collectors, curators, critics, Hollywood celebrities and art aficionados, which confirmed the city’s status as a major global art center. The glamorous fair has become the fulcrum of L.A. Art Week. This year the density of world-class museums and gallery neighborhoods in the city’s vast arts ecosystem was accentuated by the palpable energy of the fair and its satellites.

The exhibitors included top blue-chip galleries like David Zwirner, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, Spruth Magers, White Cube, Jeffrey Deitch and Lisson Gallery alongside many of  the city’s most important dealerships like David Kordansky Gallery, Nicodim Gallery,  Vielmetter, Roberts Projects, Night Gallery, Commonwealth & Council and Anat Ebgi. The galleries reported seven-figure sales at the preview and sustained the  momentum for the four days, across every tier of the art market including Focus Section and Emerging Art which sold out.

The highest transaction was David Zwirner's sale of a mixed-media work by Njideka Akunyili Crosby for $2.8 million in addition to a painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for $1.5 million . Thaddaeus Ropac sold a painting by George Baselitz for $1M + and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery sold a Sam Gilliam for $1 million. Hauser & Wirth sold out its presentation of new paintings by Conny Mater at the preview. Gagosian’s California-centered booth sold an Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry and Alex Israel and new works by Jonas Wood and Mary Weatherford. White Cube sold three sculptures from its solo presentation of Anthony Gormley for prices ranging from $666,085 to  $1.06 million.

A collaboration with the non-profit , Art Production Fund: “Body and Soul” was a program of site-specific sculptural commissions, outside the fair tent, including Polly Borland’s outstanding 7 ft  cast aluminum sculpture, BOD ( 2023 ) Borland is known for small, soft sculptures based on her signature technique of wrapping models in stuffed pantyhose,  photographing them and then scanning the photographs to make textile figurative sculptures. Borland said to me,  “The preoccupations in my work centre around the fragility of humanity. What it is to inhabit a body with a finite lifespan, one that survives ( or doesn’t ) through emergencies and love. This requires an endurance of Mind Body and Soul hopefully being able  to transcend into the Spirit World.”

In a soccer field, closer to the fair tent, Amanda Ross-Ho 's Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE)( 2026), a 16 ft monumental inflatable globe, rolled around the field with performances happening each day of the fair. Near the entrance, glass cases housed neon signs by  L.A based artist, Patrick Martinez that read, “Deport Ice,”  “No Body is Illegal,” and “Then They Came for Me.”  Martinez was commissioned to create imagery : a neon sign installed in a storefront window with text from James Baldwin: “If I love you I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see” The installation at the entrance of the fair provided a poetic response to the ICE raids across Los Angeles. 

Inside the tent the maze of booths included outstanding solo presentations from John Baldessari at Spruth Magers to Alexis Smith’s 1980 Hello Hollywood installation at Garth Greenan which gave an historic perspective of seminal Los Angeles’ artists. Other impeccably curated booths included thoughtful pairings of artworks ranging from paintings, sculptures, ceramics, textiles to photographs. Interestingly, there was a strong emphasis on small sculptures and small-scale figurative paintings: rich in historic references, technically skilled and aesthetically powerful. The market is favoring risk compression because small works can easily be moved, insured and hung anywhere. When I discussed this new trend with gallerist Mihai Nicodim he told me,  “Now it is about quality.”

Booth Highlights

  Nicola Samorì, The Perfect Girl III, 2025 oil on Trani stone 16 x 12 in 40 x 30 cm

Nicodim Booth D16

One of the most breathtaking  booths paired small paintings by Italian artist Nicola Samori with elegant sculptures by LA rising star, Isabelle Albuquerque. Samori’s paintings are like classic Renaissance and Baroque icons that have been violently distorted. The physical deformation of his  scratched surfaces is as deeply disturbing as Francis Bacon’s paintings and yet Samori  creates a sense of poignancy that is thrillingly beautiful. Samori also uses AI to distort the human body into impossible poses. But his real brilliance resides in his understanding of the paradox that emotionally charged images of acts of desecration can also breathe new life into art history.      

Samori’s work was complemented with Albuquerque's elegant, free-standing, erotic sculptures which relate female sexuality to plant forms. These two innovative artists share a heightened sensitivity to the sensory qualities of materials and attentiveness to detail that makes their inimitable artwork stand out.   
 

Installation view of Perrotin Booth A7 at Frieze Los Angeles
Photo: Silvia ROS

Perrotin Booth A7

This stunning  booth combined large paintings and sculptures by Takashi Murakami, Bharti Kher, Paola Pivi, Paul Pfeiffer, Alex Gardner, Todd Gray, Daniel Arsham, Jean-Michel Othoniel and Julian Charriere. Murakami’s work stood out because it combines cutting-edge techniques with the precision and virtuosity of traditional Japanese art.
 

Pace Gallery Booth C9

The high point in this beautifully curated booth of  sculptures, including an iconic James Turrell, was a large wall-mounted golden work by Leo Villareal. This magnificent work combines elements of abstract painting and sculpture that create varied optical effects across the foreground and background. The work harks back to 17th century alchemical engravings and esoteric geometries. By adding and subtracting light, Villareal creates a heady mix of diffused light and secondary light which is magical because it has a feeling of life inside it.

Anat Ebgi installation view. Frieze Los Angeles 2026, Courtesy Anat Ebgi Los Angeles/ New York. Photo by Mathew Kroening.

Anat Ebgi Booth D14

This booth draws intriguing through lines between vibrant figurative paintings ranging from landscapes to small still life works that celebrate color, texture, pattern with concepts of home and homeland. The thirteen up and coming artists. include: Jessica Taylor Bellamy, Mucki Botkay, Heather Guertin,  Anabel Juarez, Angela Lane, Jemima Murphy, Alex Prager, Gideon Rubin, Robert Russell, Fabian Treiber, Sarah Ann Weber, Faith Wilding and Erin Wright.

Sharif Farrag at Frieze Los Angeles 2036. Photo by Joshua White . Courtesy of the artist & Jeffrey Deitch New York & Los Angeles

Jeffrey Deitch Booth B26

This solo presentation of humorous, hybrid ceramic sculptures by Sharif Farrag draws on his Islamic heritage and the pop culture that surrounded him, growing up in LA as a "fourth dimension kid," with a Syrian mother and Egyptian father. Farrag’s  improvisational approach to ceramics encompasses multiple cultural references. He combines  patterns reminiscent of Islamic abstraction juxtaposed with cartoon-like faces that appear out of crevices and miniature cars and freeways winding around mountains. His complex compositions can be viewed from all angles: above and all the way around. Although these maximalist compositions might appear to be chaotic they are actually clearly organized.

Frieze Los Angeles. Santa Monica Airport. Was on from February 26 to March 1, 2026.