As traffic in Los Angeles elevates to gridlock levels, one oasis is the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, where gallerists at the Felix Art Fair (until 1 March) are taking time to talk to anyone and everyone who visits. “This fair is so conducive to conversations,” says Claire Warner of Volume Gallery from Chicago, as she stands in the gallery’s cabana suite, one of the prized spaces arranged around the hotel swimming pool. The gallery has shown at Felix since its launch in 2018; Warner says it was immediately apparent that the founders “were creating these situations where you can have conversations and have opportunities for community building”.
At the fair’s opening on Wednesday, visitors thronged the hallways, popping in and out of rooms on the cabana level and two upper floors. Volume is showing several artists who combine what might be considered craft (ceramics, textiles) with a fine-art finish, including tables lamps by Arina Erdélyi that feature miniature tables and chairs as their bases.
Warner says she has been happy with both the relaxed tone of the fair and with the sales. She adds that the hotel model might also be more ecological than the typical fair format: “This is utilising spaces that already exist and transforming them, rather building anew.”
The vibe is also something that keeps Nina Johnson, based in Miami, coming back to Felix—this is her gallery’s third time showing here. “It’s a really great atmosphere,” Johnson says. “We have a cabana, so we have an indoor and outdoor space. Also, there are a lot of artists in our programme who deal with craft and design and functional objects, and Californians have a rich tradition in those.” She is showing drawings and paintings by Madeline Donahue, whose works depict innocuous-looking mothers and housewives who appear to have alter-ego figures in bondage gear.
In addition to many other returning galleries such as Albertz Benda, Luis de Jesus, Tierra del Sol and Morán Morán, there are 20 first-timers at Felix this year. That includes New York Life Gallery, Som Gallery from Tokyo and Stroll Garden, which opened in Los Angeles in 2020.
Stroll Garden’s co-founder Claire Vinson did her research before signing on, visiting every past edition and sizing up the necessary logistics. “For a gallery of our size, the cost of Frieze is prohibitive,” she says. “I got to know the other young galleries that were showing at Felix, and it’s more relaxed. The price point here is closer in line with us.”
Stroll Garden is showing ceramic works by Raina Lee, a second generation Taiwanese American artist, with 12 of her works in the main room that are glazed stoneware riffs on famous paintings the artist has enjoyed seeing at museums over the years (priced from $6,000 to $8,000). These include works by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and John Singer Sargent. She is especially fond of Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882), from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the two giant Chinese vases that are featured in it. “I always thought maybe the girls should look a little Chinese, too,” Lee says, “so I made their eyes a little Chinese.”
So far, so good. Vinson says visitors to Felix are “a good mix of art advisers, collectors, even people new to collecting”. By the end of Wednesday’s preview, she had sold all but one of Lee’s dozen painterly ceramics and, she adds, “that one’s on hold”.
