"Untitled," a late 1980s work by Noah Purifoy, on view at Tilton Gallery's booth at Frieze LA. Photo : Maximilíano Durón/ARTnews
ARTnews
The Best Booths at Frieze LA, from Projects Dedicated to Fire Recovery to Quietly Introspective Sculptures
By Maximilíanio Durón | February 20, 2025
The sun was out and shining all day Thursday in Los Angeles. It seems a fortuitous sign for the 2025 edition of Frieze Los Angeles, which opened to VIPs in the morning. From 10am onward, the custom-built tent at the Santa Monica Airport was packed with visitors.
Ahead of this edition, there were concerns not only if the fair should have proceeded with this year’s edition, but who would show up. Several collectors told ARTnews that ahead of the fair, Frieze hosted several VIP events in cities across the country encouraging its frequent high-profile visitors to make the trip. That bet seems to have paid off with fears of an empty, or half-empty, tent all but disappeared.
With 96 exhibitors, including several joint booths, this Frieze is a tight affair with a myriad of different offerings throughout. Below, a look at the best booths at the 2025 edition of Frieze Los Angeles, which runs through February 23 at the Santa Monica Airport.
Noah Purifoy at Tilton Gallery
For Frieze LA, Tilton Gallery has dedicated its booth to the late LA-based artist Noah Purifoy. Focusing on the assemblages made after the artist moved to Joshua Tree in 1989 until his death in 2004, this focused presentation is a knockout. Joshua Tree (1989) shows an aerial configuration of Purifoy’s new hometown, made from various pieces of found wood, some painted in bright shades of green, blue, red, and yellow. On a pedestal is Desert Tombstone (1995) part of a larger series of black, weathered wood resembling a headstone with the fragments of a literary title (in letter blocks from a printing press); here it reads “The winter of my discontent.” But the highlight is an untitled piece from the late ’80s in which various found materials—including a saw, a ledger book from a loan company, pieces of found iron and painted wood, and an abstract collage made from strips of painted canvas—are inset like tools in a tool box into a white-painted hunk of wood.