Frieze L.A. 2023: the Biggest Sales and Celebrities

Margot Robbie, Larry David, and Elijah Wood were all at the fair, where several works sold for over US $1 million.

Frieze Los Angeles wrapped at Santa Monica Airport over the weekend.

Attendees griped about how hard it was to get to the venue, and the distance between the two main exhibition buildings, but by two key metrics, the fair was a great success.

A-list celebrities turned out in numbers.

Celebrity sightings included rapper Tyler the Creator, supermodel Heidi Klum, singer Lionel Richie, tennis great John McEnroe, Stranger Things' Jamie Campbell Bower, and Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David.

Among the movie stars at the fair were Margot Robbie, Elijah Wood, Christoph Waltz, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jared Leto, Catherine Keener, and Owen Wilson.

Galleries also reported strong sales, with Gagosian, David Kordansky Gallery, and Perrotin reportedly selling their entire booths by the end of the VIP day.

A painting by Tracey Emin sold at Xavier Hufkens for around $600,000.

David Zwirner sold the Dana Schutz painting The Encounter (2022) for 1.2 million and Lisa Yuskavage's Sari for $1 million.

Thaddeus Ropac sold a painting by Robert Rauschenberg for $1.7 million and a painting by Alex Katz for $1.5 million.

Pace Gallery sold works by Adrian Ghenie, Yoshitomo Nara, and Matthew Day Jackson for prices that reached $2 million.

And Hauser & Wirth sold Mark Bradford's Shall Rest in Honor There (2023) for a whopping $3.5 million.

'We are delighted to have placed works by Mark Bradford, Charles Gaines, Luchita Hurtado, Gary Simmons, and Henry Taylor today in major private and institutional collections,' said Marc Payot, President of Hauser & Wirth.

It's been a peripatetic start for Frieze Los Angeles, which has shown at three locations in its first four editions. The fair launched at Paramount Pictures Studios in 2019 and moved to Beverly Hills in 2022.

Frieze said the fair moved to Santa Monica to 'allow for an expanded footprint and a wider selection of galleries'.

Staying there another year might allow the fair to iron out some of the wrinkles. —[O]