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Early Sales at Frieze L.A. Signal Renewed Collector Confidence

Galleries including Almine Rech, Hauser & Wirth and Gagosian reported brisk early placements, signaling sustained demand for big names even in a recalibrating market.

Frieze Los Angeles, now in its seventh edition at Santa Monica Airport, serves as a temperature check on the L.A. art scene in a still-volatile market and among ongoing national discussions about affordability. Broad uncertainty has notably reshaped buyer behavior over the past year: following a 12 percent decline in 2024, the global art market continued to contract in 2025 amid recalibration, geopolitical instability and renewed tariff talk. Sales figures in the top tier (over $10 million) showed a sharp drop, while lower price points saw an increase. But on preview day earlier this week, the dealers were beaming.

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Gemini sold prints by Ed Ruscha, David Hockney and Frank Gehry, among others. “We’ve done really well,” said the gallery’s Joni Weyl, turning to a large-scale piece by Julie Mehretu that was still waiting for a home. “It’s a big wall, and we’ve had a lot of nibbles on it at $450,000.” Almine Rech reported similarly brisk sales, placing a painting by Ewa Juszkiewicz in the $800,000 to $850,000 range and a sculpture by Aaron Curry in the $210,000 to $245,000 range, among other works sold. And David Zwirner reportedly sold a mixed-media work by Njideka Akunyili Crosby for $2.8 million and a painting Lynette Yiadom-Boakye for $1.5 million along with works by Lisa Yuskavage, Louis Fratino and Emma McIntyre.

“It’s a pleasure to be back at the fair and to introduce the work of Conny Maier to Los Angeles,” Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth, told Observer. “The welcome on this first day has been incredibly warm. All the works in her solo presentation on our stand were placed.”

Jeffrey Deitch has ceramics by Sharif Farrag that have been moving briskly. “You give a platform to a younger artist, at a low price point, more people here can buy it,” he told Observer, grinning. For Gagosian, sales were brisk, including Ed Ruscha’s Heaven and Hot Sparks, Frank Gehry’s Fish on Fire and Alex Israel’s Paramount Pictures. And David Kordansky has been having what he calls “a super successful day,” selling out the program, which includes names like Ricky Swallow, Jonas Wood, Martha Diamond, Jared Buckhiester, Adam Pendleton, Mary Weatherford, Shara Hughes, Tom of Finland and Sam McKinniss. “The energy is really high, people are excited.”

Highlights include Gagosian’s exhibition of West Coast artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Ed Ruscha, chris burden, Frank Gehry, Mark Grotjahn, Lauren Halsey, Alex Israel and Jonas Wood. Sprüth Magers’ booth is focused on another California legend, John Baldessari, and features works by Jenny Holzer, Gala Porras-Kim, David Salle and Kara Walker.

Pace Gallery presents a never-before-seen rounded diamond installation by light-and-space maestro James Turrell. Also on hand are works by Robert Longo, as well as historical works by Jean Dubuffet, David Hockney, David Lynch and Louise Nevelson. Early sales included 1983 Dubuffet painting for $475,000, Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Transition (1990) for $450,000, a sculpture and two works on paper by Longo and two works on paper by Hockney. David Kordansky Gallery covers the past and present with works by Sam Gilliam, Lauren Halsey and others. Likewise, Gladstone Gallery is offering a multi-generational presentation of works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Frances Stark, among others, including Robert Rauschenberg, whose Saints Anonymous / ROCI VENEZUELA is part of his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange initiative.

Roberts Projects is celebrating Betye Saar’s centennial with a presentation of altered Polaroids, sketchbooks and archival materials. Château Shatto is just one of the L.A.-based galleries that make up about half of the exhibitors in the show. They’re presenting 20th-century pieces by Emily Kam Kngwarray and John Divola opposite newer works by Emma McIntyre, Charlie Engelman and Julia Yerger. Over the weekend, they’ll present paintings by Paul Becker alongside Aria Dean’s sculptures from the set of her drama The Color Scheme. Solo shows include Larry Sultan’s The Valley, which examines suburbia and the porn industry in Los Angeles, on view at Casemore Gallery and at Yancey Richardson’s shared booth.

Curated by Essence Harden (EXPO CHICAGO, Made in L.A. 2025), “Focus: A Platform for Emerging Voices” spotlights 15 new galleries showing artists like Zenobia Lee, whose work reflects Caribbean culture, Ren Light Pan, whose ink paintings sit at the crossroads of traditional Chinese technique and trans-feminism and Turiya Adkins’ ‘Afro-futuremyth’ reimagining ancestral narratives.

The “Body & Soul” section focuses on L.A. artists engaging with the boundaries of the human form through a series of site-specific works presented throughout the fair’s public areas.

Cosmas & Damian Brown have Fountain: Sources of Light, a ring of 6 ceramic heads around a fountain. Incense smoke rises above flowing water in a basin filled with metal vessels. Shana Hoehn presents Deadfall, a large-scale sculpture made from a tree with sculpted cheerleader legs emerging from its branches. And Kohshin Finley’s …and someone was playing the piano, right? features large-scale stoneware vessels set in shadowbox shelving.

Dan John Anderson’s Threshold is marked by warm-toned stained glass filtering through blackened wood, and his Terra Seer, a large-scale sculpture with a figure either emerging or retreating, carries totemic weight in its cast bronze eyes. BOD, by Polly Borland, is a flesh-like 7-foot-tall figure in cast aluminum and finished in matte automotive paint, a continuation of the artist’s proclivity for wrapping models in stuffed pantyhose. Off campus, you’ll find Kelly Wall’s Everything Must Go in Westwood, a newsstand of illuminated glass newspapers and magazines.

For Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE), Amanda Ross-Ho rolls a 16-foot inflatable Earth counterclockwise around the perimeter of the Airport Park Soccer Field for the duration of the fair. “I’m pushing the ball around for four days,” says Ross-Ho, a self-described secret showgirl from her childhood days as a competitive figure skater. “The idea of doing time keeping of the four days, it’s a temporal container, but also thinking of artistic labor and mythology, Atlas, Sisyphus. But also thinking of something that exists continuously to make people aware of time passing. So, it’s like a median clock.”

On the first day, she circled the soccer field tirelessly, but there were still three more days to go. “It’s very nerve-wracking. How can I make something huge? So, it’s a gesture. The bigness is the gesture, not the object.”

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SEE ALSO: Art Genève Courts Galleries With a Different Market Logic

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