Wherefore Art Show? Los Angeles.

Wherefore Art Show? Los Angeles.

Every year, the LA Art Show makes its debut at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Despite the pandemic, this year was no different, safely bringing art admirers together to view 120 galleries in a space of over 180,000 square feet.

Benefiting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 15% of all ticket proceeds go to support their mission. A small gallery supported by Wang Fei and CM2 Space/Hello Art World was reserved this year for St. Jude, raising money through purchases of soup cans and water bottles covered in student artwork.

Beginning on January 19, the show’s largest feat is the many modern and contemporary works that line the walls.

Clothing was a prominent subject this year in many mediums including fibers and paintings. Multi-medium pieces in PHORIA by Pezhman like Alexandria, Elegance, and Gaze use Swarovski crystals, lace, and oil paint to create new textures upon photographed models. The skirt’s thick encaustic medium forces dimension and movement in the works through 3D lines echoed in the artist’s other pieces.

Within Craig Allen’s Narrative series, he creates soft and ethereal dresses through shadow boxes to tie fairy tales to nature. In Intricate Elapse, flowers painted on the waistline slowly transform into 3D paper flowers placed inside the box, making up the skirt.

Alexandra Dillon uses oil paint to imagine the faces of women in baroque style onto found dresses. While these portraits are soft and calming neutral, their strong gazes and glittering details are possessive and captivating for the viewer.

Portraits continued throughout the galleries, whether famous, characters, or animals.

Many superheroes were spotted, mostly stemming from DC Comics with Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and even the villainous Joker. Valentin Popov showed a series of parody oil paintings echoing catholic imagery of Jesus and his disciples.

George Charriez’s The Afterparty speaks on watching those who we entrust with protecting society, depicting the Joker and Batman in a subway and a boxing ring.

Returning from the previous year, Lucia Heffernan brought back her parody animals, including personified dogs gaming, a shark playing pool, a seal in a bathtub, a wall of mice doing various activities especially with food, and a hippie cow. Each painted from oil, they capture an extreme playfulness within the scenes and color palette.

Paying tribute to previous decades, artists like Alexander Calder and Peter Max were shown with Calder’s brightly contrasting tapestries and Max’s colorful landscape paintings.

In a newer art field, NTFs made an appearance at the Fabrik NFT Salon, curated by B. Creative Studios, MannyLinx, Jeannine Chanin Penn, and Paiman. NFTs are completely unique non-fungible tokens that utilize cryptocurrency to attribute ownership.

Whether a buyer or appreciator, you don't want to miss the next LA Art Show for its diverse collections and large space. Be sure to stay on the lookout for next year’s!

Mia Jessie