LA’s Felix Art Fair Meets Grief With Absurdity

by Admin
LA’s Felix Art Fair Meets Grief With Absurdity

LOS ANGELES — We’ve made it to another LA Art Week! I went into this year feeling a bit apprehensive. Normally, Felix — the fair that exhibits artworks within poolside cabanas at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, on view now through Sunday, February 23 — is much more relaxed and lighthearted than Frieze, the week’s centerpiece show. But with artists, gallerists, and collectors still in the midst of recovery from the Palisades and Eaton fires, I couldn’t help but wonder: Would this silly fair be cloaked in a somber atmosphere?

On opening day, fire relief was immediately foregrounded by an exhibition and silent auction assembled by the newly formed collective LA Ayuda Network, a collective of artists and art workers who have been providing assistance to fire victims. Over 150 local artists donated new works, each priced at just $500 except for a small selection by high-profile local artists including Rafa Esparza, Beatriz Cortez, and noé olivas, which were being sold in a silent auction to benefit those impacted.

“The show was called Foundations, with the idea that nothing is built from one stone,” artist Debra Scacco, one of the collective’s organizers, told me on opening day. “So we invited artists to make a stone.”

Artists were allowed to interpret this assignment very loosely, so the array of objects, displayed on rows of low benches, spans everything from painted rocks and watercolor drawings to sound installations. Among them is Emily Müller’s “The Museum of Stones” (2025), a tiny gallery displaying small ore rocks on pedestals or mounted with wire. Camilla Taylor, who lost her home and studio in the fire, contributed “Ear Fragment” (2025), a ceramic fragment in the shape of an ear protruding from a wooden frame. 

Taylor’s work is also being exhibited at the fair by the Kyiv- and New York-based Voloshyn Gallery, which decided to feature almost exclusively Los Angeles artists even though it does not currently represent any of them.

“We decided to change our presentation to show local-based artists to support the community,” said gallery owner Julia Voloshyna.

Voloshyna reached out to the ceramicist Cathy Akers, who evacuated her home during the Eaton Fire and was fortunate enough to return safely. Together, they curated a group show centering Taylor’s drawings and glass sculptures of staircases; Aker’s exuberant vases, some of which feature nude women as handles; and Lara Joy Evans’s c-prints of mud pots embedded in custom-made resin frames, among other works.  

Apart from these more obvious references to the fires, Felix was just as cheerful as ever — though it did feel less crowded than past editions — and the works on display were a full-tilt into the realm of surrealism. This levity felt purposeful: Not only would the fair not be marred by tragedy, but it would also be pointedly absurd, reminding its attendees of art’s potential to express joy.

I particularly loved the details in the pastoral paintings of William Schaeuble, who was the sole artist exhibited by the Chicago-based gallery Povos. Across the works that make up his solo presentation, titled Where is everyone going?, an Elvis impersonator stands on top of a podium, tiny cars are burning in the countryside, and dogs are barking everywhere, including in trees. 

A room jointly shared by Long Story Short and Marinaro galleries featured a painting by Jeremy Olson, “Anesthetica” (2025), in which aliens huffed some kind of nuclear green laughing gas. It’s uncommon to see Olson’s skillful painting, especially striking in its lusciously rendered carpets, portraying sci-fi stoners instead of haughty rich people. This room also showcased many paintings by Hannah Murray, including “Soeurs Vertes” (2024), a vibrant piece dominated by shades of pink and blue in which two expectant mothers sit poolside in their last childless Hot Girl Summer. This scene isn’t necessarily surreal, but I can’t remember the last time I saw pregnant women so beautifully rendered in contemporary art, so it may as well be a fantasy.

Among all the mythological references, I kept noticing one figure haunting paintings and drawings: Satan. I’m not sure if the influence came from the fires or the recent takeover of the Trump administration, but the overall message seemed to be that the world is going to hell. I spied horned creatures in Luciano Maia’s “Sem título da série Onironauta” (2024), presented by the LA- and Milan-based gallery M+B, and Rick Bartow’s “Bull Man Laughs” (2011), shown by LA’s Timothy Hawkinson Gallery. In a display by Charles Moffett gallery in New York City, pointy-earned demons copulated in front of vibrant bonfires throughout Maggie Ellis’s oil paintings. And in El Apartamento, a gallery based in Havana and Madrid, a painting by Rocío García, “El brindis” (2025), showed a hairy wolf-like creature toasting and interlocking legs with his date, the scene bathed in blood-red hues. 

Not everyone was prepared to dance with the devil, however. In a presentation by the NYC gallery Europa, Milly Skellington protected the booth with “HOLYWATER” (2024), the phrase hand-carved into pink quartz in the style of the Hollywood sign. We need to sprinkle that sacred element all across the city, dousing any wildfire ember that remains.

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