LOS ANGELES — It’s my fourth rodeo at Felix Art Fair, which sets up its booths inside the poolside cabanas at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It’s the second biggest event happening in the Los Angeles art world during so-called “Frieze Week,” and it stands out to me that Felix’s name gets left out of this informal title. Just last year, we were referring to “LA Art Week,” because Felix and the Spring/Break Art Show took place concurrently. But now, I barely heard anyone talk about Felix leading up to the event, and as I took the bus to Hollywood, I wondered just how packed the VIP preview would be.
Felix knows it’s one of the underdogs in the art fair battles, and they invite scrappy spaces among the 60-plus galleries that couldn’t — or just didn’t want to — muscle their way into the Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport where Frieze takes place. This year, there were impressive displays from the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, LA’s Tierra del Sol, and HAIRandNAILS in Minneapolis, proving that nonprofits and artist-run spaces can play the blue-chip game.
