Michele StuevenThe Frieze LA International Art Fair returns to the Santa Monica Airport on Thursday, Feb. 26, through Sunday, March 1, during Black History Month. The fair will feature about 100 galleries, an expansive program of installations, collaborations with nonprofit organizations, and pop-ups from some of LA’s favorite restaurants.
In addition to the fair, there will be plenty of other exhibitions around town worth taking in. In addition to the fair, there will be plenty of other exhibitions around town worth taking in. HERE NOW and THEN is a cross-generational exhibition during Frieze LA that traces Black Diasporic memory in Los Angeles.
Tanya Weddemire Gallery, in partnership with Hamilton-Selway Fine Art, presents HERE NOW and THEN, a group exhibition rooted in the lived realities, memory, and enduring legacy of the Black Diaspora. The show is on view from Wednesday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, March 15.
The gallery features works by artists Gregory Saint Amand, Moses Salihou, O’Neil Scott, Floyd Strickland, and Candice Tavares, and Hamilton-Selway Fine Art features works by artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.
Candice Tavares Take Me to the Water (CourtesyTanya Weddemire Gallery)
Together, the artworks in HERE NOW and THEN offer a distinct yet interconnected perspective on Black identity across time, place, and experience. Gregory Saint Amand explores themes of joy, youth, and interiority, capturing everyday moments that affirm Black presence and emotional depth. Moses Salihou’s textured paintings navigate abstraction and figuration to reflect familial bonds, intimacy, and collective memory within diasporic life. O’Neil Scott draws from art historical traditions and Caribbean mythology, reimagining realism through a diasporic lens that bridges past and present. Candice Tavares employs hand-carved wood portraiture to honor Black beauty, identity, and resilience, using the material as both an archive and a testimony.
During Frieze week, Francis Gallery will present The Sky Between Us, a site-specific solo exhibition by Los Angeles–based artist John Zabawa, staged inside the historic Neutra VDL House, the former home and studio of architect Richard Neutra. Bringing together an LA artist, an LA gallery, and one of the city’s most emblematic modernist houses, the exhibition takes Los Angeles itself as its subject.
Created specifically for the VDL House, Zabawa’s new paintings move between interior life and the Southern California landscape: panoramic views of the San Gabriel Mountains, still lifes drawn from domestic space, and fleeting moments of light and atmosphere. Working between figuration and abstraction, Zabawa uses familiar scenes as an entry point into memory and interior life, translating lived experience into painterly form.
Conceived as a place where interior and exterior are closely connected, Neutra’s house provides a natural setting for this body of work. Installed within the home’s architecture and domestic setting, the paintings echo the continuity between inside and outside, nature and modern living, and private space and landscape, principles that underpin both the house and Zabawa’s approach to painting.
Founded in 2019 by Rosa Park, Francis Gallery is known for its intimate, narrative-driven curatorial approach, presenting work that integrates with lived spaces and fosters dialogue between art, architecture, and everyday life. The Sky Between Us builds on this approach, situating Zabawa’s observations of Los Angeles within a modernist home conceived as a place of living, looking, and making, and transforming the site into both setting and subject.
LA artist John Zabawa and the Neutra VDL House (Rich Stapleton, Courtesy of Francis Gallery)
During the Frieze weekend, BUTTER Fine Art Fair will make its official debut at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, bringing together some of the city’s established and emerging Black artists with a strong emphasis on access, community, and culture.
BUTTER LA is the first expansion of the nationally recognized BUTTER Fine Art Fair, known for its artist-first approach that gives 100% of artwork sales directly to the artists. Since its founding in 2021, BUTTER has generated $1.2M in sales, all going back to the artists.
Curated by Nakeyta Moore (ARTLOUDLA), Kimberly Drew (former PACE Gallery), and BUTTER co-founders Malina Simone and Alan Bacon with support from their newly formed Advisory Council which includes local cultural figures like Khalil Kinsey (The Kinsey Collection/Context Projects), Jac Forbes (Jac Forbes Co) and Lauren Holiday (Olympian/pro soccer player), they’re bringing a multi-layered story about Black art, community, and economic impact to the forefront of Frieze Week.
Featured artists include Former Dodger Micah Johnson, Mr. Wash, Autumn Breon, Cortney Herron, Micaiah Carter , and April Bey. Located at Hollywood Park, BUTTER will center access, ensuring Inglewood students (18 and under) will have free entry, while Inglewood residents can purchase discounted tickets.
Courtesy Butter LA