Though art fair week in Los Angeles may be focused on Frieze and Felix, there’s a wealth of satellite design shows around the city that are worth visiting. Check out our editor’s top picks below, and stay tuned for more on-the-ground coverage as the week progresses.
Se Oh reconfigures their own pasts and presents—their Korean heritage, conservative Christian upbringing in West Tennessee, and queer identity—as delicate, ghostly objects into which viewers project and reflect themselves. They’ve lately taken shape as small, paper-thin porcelain vessels modeled after traditional Korean ceramics that were buried with the dead. A ceremony on Feb. 28 will debut large white celadon-glazed porcelains whose forms are inspired by the visual language of Old Testament angels that keep watchful eyes as they reflect on “little deaths.”
Lauren S. Thompson has spent the past three years studying everything about tetrahedrons to inform her debut Tetrastella collection, which channels the shape’s frequencies and patterns into clean-lined marble furniture with geometries specifically crafted to resonate with human energy. After debuting at New York’s Spring Place this past fall, the Los Angeles local is preparing a must-see showcase during Frieze Week before bringing the complete collection to Milan—and beginning anew with softer shapes in the future.
Until Feb. 29 8271 Beverly Blvd
Photography by Stephane Aboudaram, courtesy of Gallery Fumi and Sized Studio…
Gallery Fumi unveiled its inaugural stateside exhibition at Sized earlier this month. This six-week-long showcase features a fresh collection of standout pieces that capture the blend of beautiful, provocative, refined, and offbeat that has cemented Fumi’s fruitful outings at marquee fairs like Design Miami and Salon Art+Design, but scaled up. Watch for Spanish artist Saelia Aparicio’s powerful Esfinge Absorta room divider, ceramic artist Jeremy Anderson’s large chandelier and playful Piccolo vases, an intricate light sculpture by JAMESPLUMB, and Max Lamb’s cardboard furniture fashioned out of everyday delivery boxes littering his studio.
Continuing his signature exploration of recycled surfaces, the Milanese artisan incorporates hand-painted fiberglass, semi-precious stones, and a medley of dark monochromes into one-of-a-kind sculptural furniture with a raw expression. “I have pursued cultures in search of symbols and iconographies that overlap with mine,” de Cotiis says. “It’s a research on contamination. All that is layered inside me, which belongs to me, but above all, what I still have not yet encountered.” The standout: a monumental cabinet clad in hand-painted fiberglass that effortlessly toes the line between poetic Brutalism and functional simplicity.
7070 Santa Monica Blvd Until June 19
Photography by Timothy Doyon, courtesy of Friedman Benda…
Barbora Žilinskaitė creates very “bodily” furniture—sculptural pieces seemingly made of plump, cartoonishly exaggerated human limbs that fit together like puzzle pieces. After feeling stifled by the confines of traditional design education, the Lithuania-born talent sought to imbue everyday objects with corporeal features that pique the imagination and spur the uncanny feeling that the objects we surround ourselves with may have a life of their own.
You could say Los Angeles runs deep in the veins of Cuff Studio. Its co-founders Kristi Bender and Wendy Schwartz see to it that each piece of furniture and every wallcovering produced through partner Black Crow Studios are designed and made in California. An earth-toned palette of sandstone, lush greens, and golden hour colorscapes permeate its thoughtful edit of lighting and furniture that seems to pick up where key moments in collectible Italian midcentury design left off. Now that edit is in closer reach than ever with the studio’s newly opened Melrose gallery. The space brings some of Cuff’s most enduring silhouettes, like its Ripple console, wavy Solana chaise, and geometric Facet dresser, together under one roof.
The Future Perfect places work by JB Blunk and Isamu Noguchi side-by-side—along with Alana Burns’ jewelry made of materials sourced from the sea, a quilted fiberglass chandelier by Minjae Kim, and meditative stone sculptures by Ian Collings—to reveal how their influence reverberates into the 21st century. Set at the gallery’s Goldwyn House at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, “Inner Space” reveals how Blunk and Noguchi’s boundless material experiments echo across eras and into the practices of three vibrant contemporary artists. Also on view is Karl Zahn’s ambitiously scaled light installation in the staircase and a powder room refreshed by Chris Wolston, who crafted a one-of-a-kind sink, mirror, and bath tissue dispenser for the occasion.
Best known for light sculptures that evoke alien-like landscapes and otherworldly shadework that employs translucent paper, Bennet Schlesinger found himself wanting to make tile. Those experiments led him to combine fabric inlay techniques with woodworking, yielding a series of tables marked by hand-painted tiles embedded into their surface. He also collaborated with fashion designer Emily Dawn Long on cuboid leather bean bags studded with hand-made ceramic buttons painted earthen shades of green, blue, and red, tones that are echoed in sconces adorned with luminous paper shades dotting the gallery walls.
3021 Rowena Ave Until April 13
“Tiempo Tempio”
Gry Space and Deceres, the Los Angeles furniture studio founded by Denise Martinez and Jorge Arturo Ibarra, explore our connections to time through Brutalist-inspired architectural furniture and botanical sculptures. The duo’s newly unveiled objects contrast and compliment those by the likes of Ananas Ananas, Alejandro Bataille, and Akihito Nikaido inside Eyn Vas Gallery, whose Temple Street outpost is transformed into a temple of time and permanence.
1634 W Temple St Until March 9
“Mother Tongues” and “Zizipho Poswa: Indyebo YakwaNtu” at Southern Guild
Inaugurating the South Africa–based gallery’s newly opened Los Angeles outpost is both a group exhibition featuring 26 artists from the African continent like Manyaku Mashilo, Andile Dyalvane, and Rich Mnisi that chart how we channel language into diverse modes of expression. In a solo show, South African sculptor Zizipho Poswa unveils her most ambitious technical undertakings to date: five colossal ceramic and bronze sculptures reaching heights of more than eight feet tall that upscale objects of African beautification.
