While the art world has felt bleak amid a buckling market, a new art fair is gracing Los Angeles this year. Named for its location, Santa Monica Post Office will run concurrently with Frieze LA and Felix art fair in February.
The new boutique art fair may be small in size, but it is expected to pack a big punch. The LA fair was born from the earlier and smaller project Place des Vosges in Paris, also named for its location, for which a limited number of notable international galleries staged a show together over the last two consecutive years. Noticing some success and a lot of camaraderie, organizer Chris Sharp decided to bring this energy from the city of light to the city of angels.
“The fair landscape has gotten really complicated,” Sharp said in an interview. “The fee structure [of larger fairs] is somewhat prohibitive, and I wanted to create an alternative to that.”
In recent years, art fairs have expanded and become more corporatized, with substantial price increases, in which it can be difficult, if not impossible, for emerging or small galleries to participate, let alone experiment with their presentations. Charging project spaces $2,000 and galleries $6,000—a nominal fee compared to its larger competitors—Santa Monica Post Office will be “much more collegial” with “less pressure to sell.” It is expected to feel more like a large, curated group exhibition rather than an art fair with separate booths set up to sell.
The Fluctuating Value of Creative Work
The move is not entirely unexpected for the art world, which has seen art dealers dissatisfied with the status quo established by art fairs such as the Art Dealers Association of America and the Armory Show.
The art world is not alone in facing these hurdles and feeling the need to crusade for its own worth. In the digital age, the value of creative work is being actively diminished or undervalued from nearly every angle. Even before the last few years, the sheer quantity of ‘content’ being pumped out in the film and television industry across streaming platforms had led to a dilution of its perceived worth among general audiences. The difference between planning a night out in which a viewer has to go to the theater, purchase a ticket, and view a film on its own terms in its own setting and simply flipping a movie on at home is monumental.
While these issues were already in place prior to COVID lockdowns, they were further exacerbated by the one-two punch of theaters closing for a period of time and the introduction of AI to the marketplace. Now, AI generators can produce artwork (whether that be an image, a novel, or a film) in far less time than it takes a human being to do so, leading to an even larger influx of quantity but at a far worse quality. The result has been that getting general audiences to properly value art as a resource and necessity can be a tremendous struggle.
Who Is Featured?
Santa Monica Post Office will feature a total of 28 local, national, and international galleries from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, New York, Milan, and Tokyo. The fair will consist exclusively of solo projects, including a presentation of one of Kaari Upson’s last bodies of work via Sprüth Magers, a showcase of Sara Cynwar’s latest work presented by Cooper Cole, and a show of work from the late Lin May Saeed from Chris Sharp Gallery.
The full list of participants is listed below:
- 4649, Tokyo
- Babst Gallery, Los Angeles
- Castle, Los Angeles
- Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
- Cooper Cole, Toronto
- Cruise Control, Cambria
- Ehrlich Steinberg, Los Angeles
- Et al., San Francisco
- Good Weather, Little Rock, Chicago
- Gordon Robichaux, New York
- Harlesden High Street, London
- House of Seiko, San Francisco
- Kayokoyuki, Tokyo
- King’s Leap, New York
- Laurel Gitlen, New York
- Lomex, New York
- Louis Reed, New York
- Michael Benevento, Los Angeles
- Overduin & Co., Los Angeles
- P.P.O.W., New York
- Roland Ross, Margate
- Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York
- Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, Los Angeles
- Theta, New York
- Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo
- Tureen, Dallas
- The Untitled Love, Los Angeles
- Zero…, Milan
The fair is set to be an exciting event in the Los Angeles art scene. It is set to draw in art lovers from all over.
