Frieze Los Angeles may draw thousands out to the expansive fairgrounds in Santa Monica, but each year some of the most exciting art is displayed off-site. Since LA’s art scene is just as sprawling as its landscape, here’s our guide to the best the city’s galleries have to offer this week, sorted by neighborhood.
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Downtown/Eastside
“Some lives in the sunshine” by Rodney McMillian
Where: Vielmetter
When: Through March 1
Why It’s Worth a Look: Rodney McMillian’s use of utilitarian materials like chicken wire and house paint nods to the legacy of readymades, but his pieces are decidedly transformed. In this show, the Americana symbol of a star quilt is torn and stained. In another work, a globe on an end table is subsumed into a large black rock.
Know Before You Go: Using household objects—from piggy banks to lamps—McMillian interrogates how systematic racism has permeated American homes through the practice of redlining and discriminatory lending.
“Aragonite and conchiolin” by Emma McIntyre
Where: Château Shatto
When: February 24 – April 4
Why It’s Worth a Look: Combining chemical spillages and precise brush strokes, the New Zealand-born, LA-based artist defies finality or permanent meaning in her paintings. Rather, interpretation and hazy figures alike emerge over time when rooted firmly in front of one of her gestural compositions.
Know Before You Go: The exhibition’s title comes from the chemical composition of pearls, detaching them from their status as precious objects and returning them to their basic, buildable form.
“Object Prosthetics” by Cayetano Ferrer
Where: Commonwealth and Council
When: Through March 14
Why It’s Worth a Look: LACMA, one of the artistic anchors of Los Angeles, has been in a state of transformation in recent years—with the original campus demolished in 2020 and its new building set to be unveiled this April. Ferrer uses physical remnants of the original building—rubble, rebar, and tiles—for his latest series of sculptures.
Know Before You Go: Ferrer makes a habit of using architectural remains in his work; his first solo exhibition at the Santa Barbara Art Museum more than a decade ago, featured rarely exhibited archeological fragments from the institution’s collection.
“Eutierria” by Vicky Colombet
Where: Fernberger
When: Through April 4
Why It’s Worth a Look: Vicky Colombet’s paintings combine the organic environment with the inner self. At every turn, she works to elevate the natural world and erase the human imprint, minimizing even the appearance of brush strokes.
Know Before You Go: If the whole concept of venerating the integrity of nature and dissolving the ego sounds a bit zen, you’d be correct: Colombet has been a practicing Buddhist for decades.
“ALL & ALL” by Kye Christensen-Knowles
Where: Gaylord Fine Arts
When: February 24 – March 29
Why It’s Worth a Look: Who said figuration is dead? Christensen-Knowles, one of CULTURED’s 2025 Young Artists, is a little bit Goya and a little bit H.R. Giger in their exploration of otherworldly physical forms.
Know Before You Go: Gaylord is open by appointment only, so be sure to call ahead if you plan to check out the show.
“The Ground Glows Back” by Christina Quarles
Where: Hauser & Wirth
When: February 24 – May 3
Why It’s Worth a Look: In her large-scale abstractions, Christina Quarles ushers in a cacophony of colors, patterns, and figures. Her first hometown show with Hauser & Wirth sees the artist embracing a denser and more disorienting style and debuting five charcoal works on paper in addition to the canvases she’s known for.
Know Before You Go: Quarles was directly impacted by last year’s fires: She lost her Altadena home and had to restore paintings from her studio that sustained smoke and ash damage. These works, created in the aftermath of the fires, circle feelings of displacement and loss.
Hollywood
“Barley Patch II” by Dustin Hodges
Where: Sebastian Gladstone
When: Through March 28
Why It’s Worth a Look: Here, Hodges presents a sequel to his show at 15 Orient in New York last year, once again exploring rural landscapes in a collection of autumnal paintings. In the world of “Barley Patch II,” the silhouettes of classic cartoon characters leer and loom over barnyards, telephone wires, and fallen tree trunks, evoking boundary collapse in a composite field of vision.
Know Before You Go: If film was the defining medium of the 20th century, Hodges juxtaposes its framing with older art historical references, likewise dissolving the boundaries of time and influence in a single canvas.
“The Great Wall of Los Angeles” by Judith F. Baca
Where: Jeffrey Deitch
When: Through April 4
Why It’s Worth a Look: First conceived in 1974 and completed over many years, Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles mural tells the local story of a decade of upheaval in a misunderstood city. Beginning with the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and following the period from Vietnam War protests to Kent State, it is an account of the collision of art and civic life in real time.
Know Before You Go: Baca initially worked alongside 400 community members to create the Great Wall during the 1970s and is working to expand the project in collaboration with the Social and Public Art Resource Center today.
“Démesuré” by Zenobia Lee
Where: Sea View
When: Through March 28
Why It’s Worth a Look: Zenobia Lee’s sculptural works engage the uneasy remnants of colonialism’s history in the Caribbean. Through oversized teak dominoes, discarded parasols, and iron-climbing flora, Lee foregrounds the unruly and the untameable despite years of hegemonic violence.
Know Before You Go: This might be a debut solo exhibition for the 30-year-old Lee, but it’s been a long time coming. The artist has already built an expansive body of work investigating the legacy of slavery, memory, and the archive.
“Trial of the Finger” by Tacita Dean
Where: Marian Goodman
When: Through April 25
Why It’s Worth a Look: From films, ballet sets, costumes, drawings, and photographs, this new show foregrounds the wide sweep of Tacita Dean’s recent work. The exhibition title comes from 18th-century English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson, who chastised contemporary poets for their obsession with superficial conceits (counting syllables on their fingers) rather than holistically engaging with the power of language. Following Johnson, Dean’s work prioritizes the analog and expressive—images on the windows of 19th-century steam locomotives, powdery oxidized paint, and fuzzy Polaroid pictures—and encourages an expansive view of her practice.
Know Before You Go: Look out for a recently completed tondo made of blackboard and a 16mm filmic ode to influential Los Angeles printshop owner Sidney Felsen and his handmade works.
“Tracery” by Richard Rezac
Where: Chris Sharp Gallery
When: February 24 – April 11
Why It’s Worth a Look: If there is something architectural about the Chicago-based artist’s sculptures, it’s because their form is created with its relationship to the human body in mind. Maple wood, plaster, and cotton form the structure, but the result is often something much more uncanny.
Know Before You Go: Since the mid 1980s, Rezac has been almost exclusively making sculptural works from found objects, each placing the familiarity and intimacy of the objects front of mind with the viewer.
Beverly Hills/West Hollywood
“Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics”
Where: MAK Center for Art and Architecture
When: February 25 – May 24
Why It’s Worth a Look: Walking into the Schindler House, viewers are greeted by Nancy Holt’s voice: thoughtful and ambling as she scans radio dials and muses aloud on a 1976 drive from Salt Lake City to New York. The introduction kicks off an exhibition attuned to the ways language and architecture interact, culminating in Holt’s 1972 work California Sun Signs, which repertories usages of the word “sun” in the state’s public landscape.
Know Before You Go: Holt once described the audio works featured here as “poems in place.”
“Ellsworth Kelly: The Naming of Colors”
Where: Matthew Marks Gallery
When: February 26 – April 4
Why It’s Worth a Look: Embodying the ideal of “less is more,” the late Ellsworth Kelly siphoned his experiences and observations into disarmingly spare studies in color. The nine works on view here span five decades of the artist’s career and pull their chromatic inspiration from sources as disparate as a taxi cab to a French fishing harbor.
Know Before You Go: The earliest work in the exhibition, featured above, is one of the earliest examples of Kelly’s multi-panel paintings, inspired by his encounters with winged altarpieces while traveling around Europe.
“Milton Avery: The Figure”
Where: Karma
When: Through March 28
Why It’s Worth a Look: This survey charts Milton Avery’s evolution as an artist through his figurative paintings, starting during his beginnings as a Connecticut factory worker with dreams of moving to New York to the final decades of his life. When the show was up in New York last fall, CULTURED‘s Co-Chief Art Critic Johanna Fateman described it as “bananas” and “museum-quality.”
Know Before You Go: The latest canvas included in “The Figure” is from 1964, painted months before Avery’s death the following January. Green Stockings depicts his wife Sally, who he had met four decades prior, a recurring muse and an artist herself.
“CSSC, Coach Stage Stage Coach, A&E, Adolf/Adam & Eva/Eve, Samples” by Paul McCarthy
Where: The Journal Gallery
When: Feb. 23 – April 25
Why It’s Worth a Look: Paul McCarthy’s first exhibition with The Journal Gallery will focus on two of his ongoing works preoccupied with the sicknesses at the heart of America: CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach and A&E Adolf/Adam & Eva/Eve. CSSC first emerged from a 2023 film McCarthy made with his son about cowboys, featuring a character named Ronald Raygun, and one based on the banker J.P. Morgan, played by McCarthy himself. A&E emerged from McCarthy’s ongoing collaborations with German actor Lilith Stangenberg and their explorations of history, cultural spectacle, and chaos through the lens of Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun.
Know Before You Go: McCarthy has a reputation as the art world’s chaos agent. He famously gave Parisians a conversation starter when he installed Tree, an inflatable sculpture reminiscent of an anal plug, in the lavish Place Vendôme in 2014.
“Deep Fake” by Lynn Hershman Leeson
Where: Hoffman Donahue
When: Through March 14
Why It’s Worth a Look: This exhibition shows off “deepfakes,” pairs of famous figures mashed together into puzzling portraits. In doing so, Lynn Hershman Leeson creates pop cultural Frankensteins: imagine Marilyn Monroe/Sigmund Freud, Janis Joplin/James Dean, or David Bowie/Katharine Hepburn.
Know Before You Go: Hershman Leeson is a bit of a shapeshifter herself: She lived as her alter ego, Roberta Breitmore, for six years in the 1970s, playing around with the instability of personhood in real time. Now, she’s updated this identity crisis for the digital age.
“Alma Berrow”
Where: Megan Mulrooney
When: February 24 – March 28
Why It’s Worth a Look: The British ceramicist’s self-titled exhibition at Megan Mulrooney is her first U.S. solo show. Domestic life, emotional intimacy, and familial relationships are central to her work as she recreates the cigarette butts, dishes, and magazines that punctuated her childhood home.
Know Before You Go: Prior to working as an artist, Berrow was a pastry chef. She turned to ceramics during Covid lockdowns.
Mid-City/Westside
“Eyelets of Alkaline” by Lauren Quin
Where: Pace Gallery
When: Through March 28
Why It’s Worth a Look: Angeleno native Lauren Quin presents her first solo show with Pace, featuring an array of layered compositions. Her pieces garner their signature “tubes” of intense color and light through a long process of applying, scraping, and carving away.
Know Before You Go: Quin, a 2025 CULTURED Young Artist, will unveil her artwork alongside a new essay from American poet and playwright Ariana Reines.
“Precious Moments” by Sayre Gomez
Where: David Kordansky Gallery
When: Through March 1
Why It’s Worth a Look: A Chicago native, Sayre Gomez moved to Los Angeles in 2006 and fell in love with the city in all its grit and garishness. His photorealistic paintings, characterized by a “documentarian’s impulse,” double as a semiotic inquiry into the commercial and residential aesthetics of his adopted home—and the socio-political realities they reveal.
Know Before You Go: The exhibition also features Gomez’s most ambitious sculptural intervention to date, an 8-foot scale recreation of the Oceanside Plaza towers, a luxury development that was abandoned before completion and has since become a hub for graffiti.
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