LOS ANGELES — In just over a week, three art fairs will be popping up throughout Los Angeles: Frieze at the Santa Monica Airport, Felix at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, and Spring Break in Culver City. While much of the LA art world will be spending their days navigating the cavernous tents of Frieze or lounging by the Hockney pool at the Roosevelt, there are several cultural events taking place throughout the city that offer alternatives to the market-driven machinations of the fairs. Raffi and Al’s art bar provides a communal setting for a cocktail, JOJO ABOT blurs boundaries with their multidisciplinary performance, a Teddy Sandoval listening party showcases intergenerational creative networks, and more.
Central Server Works Presents Volta’s Glass House
Glass House is an interactive, multidisciplinary theater piece in which audience members and performers will collaborate to shape the course of the work. Drawing on choreographer Merce Cunningham’s notions of chance and Jungian theories of home, each night’s performance will take a different form, based on the choices of the audience-cum-participants. Presented by art gallery Central Server Works, directed by Mamie Green and Megan Paradowski, and written by Sammy Loren and Zoey Greenwald, Glass House features sculptures by Gbenga Komolafe and music by composer Patrick Shiroishi.
Volta Collective (voltacollective.com)
G-Son Studios, 3218 Glendale Boulevard, Atwater Village, Los Angeles
February 29–March 3, 8pm nightly ($30)
Terry Allen & the Panhandle Mystery Band: “Music Beyond the Grave!”
For six decades, Terry Allen has worked across a diverse spectrum of media to create dark narratives of the American West that combine myth, humor, and pathos. Alongside, or perhaps intertwined with, his artistic practice, Allen has released 14 albums, beginning with Juarez (1975), an alt-country concept record that recounts an ill-fated road trip criss-crossing the US-Mexico border. In conjunction with LA Louver’s presentation of his work at Frieze, Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band will bring their unique brand of cowboy noir to the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever.
LA Louver (lalouver.com)
Hollywood Forever, 5970 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Wednesday, February 28 & Thursday, February 29, 8pm ($75)
Raffi and Al’s Legendary Garden Party
Inspired by famous watering holes frequented by artists, such as the Kronenhalle Bar in Zurich and the now defunct Hop Louie in LA’s Chinatown, Raffi Kalenderian and Alberto Cuadros created Raffi and Al’s, a mobile pop-up that acts as “a trojan horse for good times,” according to Kalenderian. During Frieze, they’ll be stationed at Vielmetter Los Angeles, transforming the gallery’s greenhouse space into an updated fern bar filled with plants, mimosas, and DJ sets by friends and colleagues. The bar will be accompanied by a salon-style group show of works on paper and sculptures by Dan Levenson, Bart Exposito, Becky Kolsrud, Rochele Gomez, Ross Simonini, Jonas Wood, Mimi Lauter, Ry Rocklen, and many, many more.
Vielmetter Los Angeles (vielmetter.com)
1700 South Santa Fe Avenue, #101, Downtown, Los Angeles
February 27–March 2
Ficus Interfaith’s Los Angeles Bar and Second Pour
The collaborative duo known as Ficus Interfaith has turned In Lieu / Ethan Tate Gallery into an actual saloon for their aptly-titled exhibition Los Angeles Bar, anchored by their functional terrazzo constructions. While Frieze is in town, they’re creating an offsite version, Second Pour, in Echo Park, which features a group show curated by Anna Frost featuring Isabelle McGuire, Louis Osmosis, Flannery Silva, Greg Cariedo, and others. On Sunday, March 3, the space will present a West Coast version of the New York karaoke event Throats, hosted by Lena Greene.
In Lieu / Ethan Tate Gallery (inlieu.online)
EARTH, 1530 Echo Park Avenue, Echo Park, Los Angeles
February 27, March 1, March 2, 6–9pm; March 3, 5–8pm
JOJO ABOT: A God of Her Own Making
JOJO ABOT incorporates sculpture, film, painting, and performance into her multi-layered practice, drawing on aesthetic and cultural traditions from her West African heritage as well as her diasporic experience living in Ghana, Kenya, Copenhagen, the United States, and elsewhere. In conjunction with her current exhibition at LA Louver, ABOT will stage A God of Her Own Making, an immersive theatrical presentation that fuses dance, music, costume, and projections into a mesmerizing vision of female-centered futurism.
LA Louver (lalouver.com)
LA Louver, 45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, California
March 1, 6–8:30pm, RSVP required
Teddy Sandoval Closing Program
Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art at the Vincent Price Art Museum highlights the career of this pivotal member of the Latinx and queer avant-garde in Los Angeles, who passed away in 1995. Sandoval was also deeply involved in the disco music scene, working from 1979 through 1984 as the creative head of Ron’s Records, a shop with locations in San Francisco’s Castro District, Long Beach, and LA. The closing reception will feature an exhibition walkthrough with reflections on Sandoval’s legacy shared by contemporary artists and writers Alex Donis, Consuelo G. Flores, Raquel Gutiérrez, and Daniel Arthur Mendoza, followed by DJ sets by Blackmuseumist and DJ Inquieto spinning LP’s from Sandoval’s personal collection.
Vincent Price Art Museum (vincentpriceartmuseum.org)
1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, California
March 2, 1–4pm
The Wrinkle Room
Founded by Michelle Carr and Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, The Wrinkle Room is a salon and performance series showcasing the work of artists and musicians “of a certain age.” Next week, The Wrinkle Room will be joined by Washington, DC-based nonprofit Transformer to celebrate the West Coast launch of the book transformer20, which traces the organization’s first two decades. The event begins with a coffee talk with Kuiland-Nazario and Transformer Founder and Director Victoria Reis, followed by a panel discussion on The Art of Collaboration moderated by Anuradha Vikram and a surprise performance.
Track 16 Gallery (eventbrite.com)
1206 Maple Avenue, Downtown, Los Angeles
February 29, 4–9pm
Graffiti Archive 1972/73: Photographs by Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark may be best known for his audacious interventions into the built environment dubbed “anarchitecture.” In the early 1970s, he photographed the burgeoning graffiti movement in his native New York, documenting a parallel strand of urban transformation. Graffiti Archive 1972/73, hosted by Beyond the Streets and Control Gallery, features over 200 of his photographs alongside period paintings and drawings by SNAKE 1, TRACY 168, STAY HIGH 149, and other artists.
Beyond the Streets and Control Gallery (control.gallery)
434 North La Brea Avenue, Fairfax, Los Angeles
March 1–April 13
Red Night Film Screening
Red Night (2023) is an experimental monster movie that follows a family of five creatures as they struggle against an evil force that has invaded their placid home. Drawing on stylish Italian giallo horror films of the 1970s, such as Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and Profondo Rosso (1975), creative duo Beck + Col crafted color-saturated sets and bespoke creature costumes, which become drenched in buckets of cinematic blood as the narrative unfolds. In keeping with the film’s theme of communal solidarity and collaboration, the monsters’ home is furnished with artwork by 10 artists including Alicia Piller, Amia Yokoyama, Minga Opazo, Ofelia Marquez, Tanya Brodsky, and others.
The Philosophical Research Society (welcometolace.org)
3910 Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Feliz, Los Angeles
February 25, 2–5 pm, free with RSVP
David Hammons Group Show
The inspiration for this exhibition began with an anecdote, possibly apocryphal, told to artist David Horvitz by a neighbor who claimed that David Hammons used to sell styrofoam balls on Crenshaw Boulevard in the 1970s. If true, this would predate his New York snowball performances, shifting the creative origin of this well-known work from NYC to LA. Co-organized by Horvitz and nonprofit artspace JOAN, David Hammons picks up on the questionable veracity of this rumor, allowing artists to engage in similar acts of speculation and invention along the curving paths of Horvitz’s urban garden. Participating artists include Carmen Argote, John Birtle, Asuka Hisa, Lukas Geronimas, Nancy Lupo, Shana Lutker, Sarah Rara, Jeff Weiss, and many more, but not David Hammons.
David Horvitz’s Garden (website to come)
1911 7th Avenue, Arlington Heights, Los Angeles
February 29–March 3, noon–sunset; reception March 2, 2–6pm
