LOS ANGELES — The 31st edition of the LA Art Show is back this week at the downtown Convention Center, more than a month before Frieze, Felix, and Post-Fair roll into town. Although it is LA’s longest-running art fair, the show is somewhat of an outcast, snubbed as pedestrian, too commercial, and out of touch with the cutting edge of the global art world. But at the rear of the cavernous exhibition hall, a pair of projects organized by curator Marisa Caichiolo gives visitors a sense of the fair’s cultural and political relevance.
Caichiolo organized the first Latin American Pavilion at the fair, a modest group of three booths: Artier Gallery from Palm Springs, Verse Gallery from Ft. Lauderdale, and Building Bridges Art Exchange, the LA-based nonprofit she founded in 2005. The display also features selections from the Pangue International Video Art Festival, with video works by 20 contemporary artists from Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, and elsewhere.
“They’re artists that people here may not know, but they're so powerful in their own communities,” Caichiolo told Hyperallergic.
Although the fair is international in scope, with a strong focus on Asia, there has historically been less representation from Latin America, something Caichiolo hopes to begin to correct with this first pavilion and expand upon in subsequent editions.
The entrance of Artier Gallery’s booth is framed by Mexico City-based artist Natasha Grey’s linen pastel and charcoal drawing “Mutable Sun” (2025), depicting a jaguar and Ixchel, the Maya goddess of the moon. On either side are vibrant, futuristic masks by Carlos Luna James, who lives in Ciudad Juárez, on the United States-Mexico border. Colombian artist Dario Ortiz updates traditional stories in his meticulously painted canvases, portraying mythological figures as contemporary border crossers making their way along the riverbank.
Verse Gallery has brought artists primarily from Colombia and Ecuador, including Johnny Lopez, whose slick resin sculptures mix Indigenous and European motifs with elements of pop culture and street art. Ecuadorian artist Maca Viva slyly challenges male power icons with her uncanny paintings of furry crowns. Colombian artist Alejandro Sanchez’s sculptures are composed of miniature storage containers, sparking a playful dialogue with Minimalist aesthetics.
Caichiolo also curated the fair’s non-commercial section, DIVERSEartLA, which is centered around the theme of biennials this year. She tapped several curators to select work from the Casablanca Biennial (Morocco), Gwangju Biennial (Korea), and the World Textile Art Biennial (Miami), among other recent exhibitions. The highlight is a mini-retrospective of biennials that have featured the work of artist Marcos Ramírez, who goes by ERRE, curated by Alma Ruiz. A cross-border artist who operates between Tijuana and San Diego, ERRE has long engaged with issues of Latine identity, immigration, and nationalism, with provocative works like his monumental "Toy-an Horse" (1997), placed at the dividing line between Mexico and the US.
His major installation “187 Pairs of Hands” (1996–97), represented here by a small section, consists of 187 photographs of people performing various examples of manual labor, accompanied by information about each subject. The work was a response to California Proposition 187, an anti-immigration ballot initiative that excluded undocumented immigrants from receiving public services such as education and healthcare.
“They tried to suppress us, surround us, and cage the workers, but everybody's still working, right now,” ERRE said, noting the connection between the bill and current ICE raids. “How can you stop a waterfall? You can't. You need to freeze the whole river.” The artist’s works feel especially urgent in the wake of the brutal killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis just days ago.
In addition to these focused presentations, this year’s fair features an international roster of over 90 exhibitors, including Epicentrum Gallery from Poland and Paris with prints by Picasso, Chagall, and Dali; London’s Rebecca Hossack Gallery with collaged paintings by Spanish artist Mersuka Dopazo; and motorcycle-inspired paintings by Clash bassist Paul Simonon at John Martin Gallery’s booth. There’s something for everyone, so if you've heard the LA Art Show is unhip in comparison to next month’s fairs, it might just be worth a trip over this weekend to see for yourself.
