Eliana Willis

One of the most iconic artists of the early Renaissance whose ideas helped revolutionize Western culture forever, Donatello is the subject of a new once-in-a-lifetime survey at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Italian artist is believed by many to be the greatest sculptor of all time thanks to his inspired reinvention of historical influences, including Classical antiquity and elegant medieval art. These ideas contributed to a novel and entirely unique vision that Donatello expressed through an impressive range of works in marble, wood, bronze, terracotta, and stucco.
Some of the best examples in the show, which brings together about 130 objects, include the marble David, the stone relief Madonna of the Clouds, and other works that have never before been seen in the U.K., such as the eye-catching gold reliquary bust of San Rossore.
Donatello’s varied life—from his humble beginnings as an apprentice goldsmith only to his time as an intimate of the powerful Medici family—also offers audiences a fascinating entry point into Florentine society during the 15th century. Building up this rich cultural context, the exhibition brings to life the old master’s artistic circle, including his teacher Ghiberti, one-time partner Michelozzo, colleagues from across northern Italy like Mantegna and Bellini and the goldsmith that his work inspired Beltramino de Zuttis.
See some of the highlights from the show below.
“Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” is on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, through June 11, 2023.
Installation view of “Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” at the V&A Museum. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Donatello, Spiritello with a tambourine. Photo by Antje Voigt, Berlin, courtesy of Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.
Donatello, Pazzi Madonna. Photo by Antje Voigt, Berlin, courtesy of Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.
Installation view of “Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” at the V&A Museum. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Attributed to Donatello, Drawing of the Massacre of the Innocents, Rennes. Photo courtesy of Musée des Beaux-Arts.
Installation view of “Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” at the V&A Museum. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Installation view of “Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” at the V&A Museum. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Donatello, San Rossore. Photo courtesy of The Ministry of Culture Italy – Regional Directorate of Museums of Tuscany, Florence.
Installation view of “Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” at the V&A Museum. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Installation view of “Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance” at the V&A Museum. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Michelozzo, Adoring Angel, commissioned from Donatello and Michelozzo’s joint studio. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum London.
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The questions of motherhood—whether to do it, how, when—is a major part of the female experience, and comes with enormous pressures related to the biological clock and societal expectations.
At New York’s Trotter and Sholer gallery, the varied ways that women artists respond to this question is the subject of its current group show, “A Suitable Accomplishment.”
The title is taken from the groundbreaking 1971 Linda Nochlin essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” which examined the social constructs that have kept women artists from receiving the same recognition as that of their male counterparts. (Spoiler alert: the demands of motherhood have sabotaged many a promising career.)
And though the essay is more than 50 years old, it speaks to issues women still face in the year 2023.
“A Suitable Accomplishment” on view at Trotter and Sholer. Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer.
“I’m not sure that we’ve progressed as far as we like to think we have,” gallery cofounder Jenna Ferrey told Artnet News. “And we definitely haven’t gone as far as we need to go!”
Ferrey focused the show on a small group of women artists whose differing experiences of motherhood painted a wide picture of the subject.
Barbara Ishikura, Jen (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
For some artists, motherhood is a creative inspiration, as with Fernanda’s Feher’s watercolors, which were “art directed” by her two-year-old, who asks her to incorporate elements like toys, ice cream, and cupcakes into her delicate works.
Others reference multiple generations of women. One of Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster’s finely detailed paintings on glass is based on a drawing by her grandmother, with her mother’s reflection subtly included in the work to tie the three women together.
Bahar Behbahani, Untitled (Immigrant Flora) 2018. Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
There’s even a mother-daughter duo, Shamsy Behbahani and Bahar Behbahani, whose works appear in the show.
“They created individual works, but they are in conversation with each other,” Ferrey said. “Bahar’s mother created a large hanging installation piece out of silver and copper thread which is hung so the light casts a shadow from Shamsy’s piece onto Bahar’s piece.”
Bahar Behbahani and Shamsy Behbahani, All the Sea for You All the Pain for Me (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
The 13 featured artists in the show include both mothers and women who have decided not to have children of their own, as well as women who haven’t decided one way or another—a question that Ferrey, who has decided she does not want to have children, has grappled with herself.
“Its something that’s been on my mind lately, and it comes up in conversations with friends, both those who have children and those who are choosing not to,” Ferrey told Artnet News. “But there’s social pressure no matter which position you take. And this is a conversation that almost probably every single woman could contribute something to.”
See what some of the women in the show had to say in their artist statements about the question of motherhood and how it relates to their work.

Fernanda Feher
Fernanda Feher, Lilyland (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“As an artist, who is a single parent most of the time, I find it challenging not being able to go work whenever inspiration comes, and it is difficult for inspiration to come when having no alone time, having to do so many things at the same time and carrying so much responsibility by myself,” Fernanda Feher said. The artist credited her “infantile universe of imagination,” saying, “I can easily join my child in her fantasy to play and welcome her into creating worlds with me such as the ones we painted and drew together for this exhibition.”

Isabelle Higgins
Isabelle Higgins, A Feast (2021). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“Our culture does not support mothers or artists enough and this is something that comes to the forefront of my mind while weighing the option of taking on the role of motherhood,” Barbara Higgins said. “So for now, I am content with mothering my artistic works through care, time, and dedication.”

Barbara Ishikura
Barbara Ishikura, Holding Sho on Swing (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“When I gave birth to my children in the late 1980s, there was very little support for new mothers experiencing the demands of shifting cultural roles around career and childcare,” Barbara Ishikura said. “In my painting Holding Sho on Swing, I try to visualize the feelings of isolation that many young mothers experienced at that time. Looking at young women today, I see their vulnerability, but I also witness a level of confidence that was unfamiliar to me.”
Alex McQuilkin
Alex McQuilkin, Untitled (Blind Man’s Bluff), 2019. Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“Prior to having children, that idea of self, though far from uncomplicated, could be approached in a conceptual way. Since becoming a mother, even the fantasy of a singular self is out of the question,” Alex McQuilkin said. “After having my children, I began to layer archival fragments of historical wall coverings in a claustrophobically shallow trompe l’oeil space on top of repeat patterns. The specificity of these material objects with their cracks, wrinkles, and imperfections, complicates the façade of neutrality in the repeat patterns and disrupts their grid-like ability to run rampant below the surface.”
Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster
Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster, Trois gestes (Three Gestures) 2022. Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“Outside of this trio’ed collaboration, the women who precede me possess their own creative practices to sustain a fruitful life,” Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster said. “The act of making for us is as ordinary as drying dishes. My grandmother supplemented her husband’s income by selling her fiber arts, woven on her basement looms in order to dress her children. My mom fills her days with quilting after retiring from a career in cancer research, having fought to be considered both a scientist and mother. And I, after losing a child, have enveloped myself in painting.”

Anna Marie Tendler
Anna Marie Tendler, Good Mourning (2021). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“I do not particularly want children, yet at 36 I froze my eggs for fear I might change my mind,” photographer Anna Marie Tendler, who divorced her husband in 2021, said. “At first glance, my two works may appear to tell the story of a woman longing for motherhood, but I urge the viewer to consider the patriarchal conditioning that leads to this interpretation. Why does a woman clad in black and positioned in a room of empty twin beds signal loss? Why are we quick to assume she is sad? Perhaps she is Lilith, first wife of Adam, who in refusing to submit to her husband, left the Garden of Eden to become the figure of primal rage, stealing men’s sperm and devouring their babies in the dark of the night.”

Shantel Miller
Shantel Miller, Sherri and Sheryl (2018). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“These pieces are a labor of love for Black mothers in my life and for those who were not able to pro- vide love in the ways needed,” Shantel Miller said.

Azzah Sultan
Azzah Sultan, The Sewing Kit (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“Although we may grow up with our mothers, we never truly know their past and who they were before motherhood. These are conversations that are difficult to have with older generations, and I wish to explore it through a memory box,” Azzah Sultan said. “Here the biscuit tin has been reappropriated. Inside are pieces of fabric that hold personal stories. My mother starts to unveil a few but still keep some for herself.”

Chellis Baird
Chellis Baird, Hope (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“Artists, like mothers, also wear many hats, often functioning as both assistant and boss,” Chellis Baird said. The process of creation is often a juggle of several of these roles, with moments, sometimes unexpectedly, of absolute joy. Both job descriptions include the need for patience, love, and problem solving, with the witnessing of growth acting as a constant motivator and source of reward.”

Marika Thunder
Marika Thunder, Hungarian Woodshop (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“My mother is Hungarian and an artist herself. She didn’t allow her budding career and the inevitable challenges that came with raising a daughter to prevent her from achieving her dream. I’ll always admire her strength and courage to follow her own intuition,” Marika Thunder said. “The intuition of a mother, and intense psychic bond with the daughter always felt sacred to me. Though I am not a mother to a child, I feel very motherly toward each painting I make since they are objects that I’ve materialized from the ineffable parts of my lived experiences.”

Lydia Baker
Lydia Baker, Birth of an Idea (2022). Photo courtesy of Trotter and Sholer, New York.
“I’m interested in the psychological aspects of having an internal calendar—ovulation in particular, as it signifies letting go, an end, or potentially a beginning. My physical and mental experience with ovulation changes each year, and now in my early 30s, it’s become more pronounced,” Lydia Baker said. “As someone who adores children and doesn’t have them, it’s been interesting seeing my maternal energy announce itself in the studio.”
“A Suitable Accomplishment” is on view at Trotter and Sholer, 168 Suffolk Street, New York, New York, January 14–February 18, 2023.
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Roger Gastman, curator of the celebrated exhibitions “Art in the Streets” at L.A. MoCA and “Beyond the Streets” in Brooklyn, is heading to the U.K.
“Beyond the Streets London” opens today at the Saatchi Gallery, through May 9. Once more taking audiences along a journey through the history of street art, this latest offering includes entirely new works by Felipe Pantone that bring us right up to the digital age.
The mammoth survey features work from more than 100 artists, filling every room of the gallery’s multi-floored, 70,000-square-foot space. Special installations will invite visitors into traditional venues for graffiti when it was still an underground practice, such as the recreated shop Trash Records, public transportation and back alleys. Here, we come to understand the role the art form played in forging identity, youth culture and artistic resistance.
The exhibition also traces street art’s eventual acceptance by the mainstream art world, predominantly exploring its influence on leading contemporary artists as diverse as Todd James, Jenny Holzer, KAWS, Kenny Sharf, the Guerrilla Girls and Keith Haring.
Archival objects and rare documents bring to life a rich range of subcultures, from punk rock to hip-hop. Some collaborations between musicians and graffiti art on display include the styling of the Beastie Boys and the a backdrop produced live by artist FUTURA2000 during a performance by The Clash. As the exhibition shows, street art has also long been an important cultural reference for so many creatives working in fashion and film.
Check out some installation shots of the exhibition below.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May with headline supporter Adidas Originals.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May with headline supporter Adidas Originals.
Saatchi Gallery, London presents “Beyond the Streets London,” 17 February – 9 May with headline supporter Adidas Originals.
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Six months ago, the artist Brigitte D’Annibale took cultural strategist Vajra Kingsley to see an abandoned home in Malibu’s Point Dume.
With its sweeping views of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, this was where D’Annibale wanted to realize a dream of some 30 years: to create immersive environment that would bridge art, architecture, design, and the natural world.
What Kingsley saw was a boarded-up structure slated for demolition. “I said, ‘this is a depressing home, and if you think you’re going to reactivate it in sixth months, you’re out of your mind!’” Kingsley told Artnet News.
Brigitte D’Annibale, Shedding Layers of Blindness part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
But with a team of contractors and builders, D’Annibale gutted the home and stripped it to its studs, only to later reuse the salvaged raw materials to bring it back to life.
“As a metaphor, I took home, which is a point of origin, stripped it down, and everything I used to rebuild it as an installation came out of what was stripped away,” D’Annibale told Artnet News.
The installation is titled B=f(P, E), after Lewin’s Equation, which states that behavior results both from a person and their environment, reflecting D’Annibale’s hope that the immersive space will help visitors connect with their surroundings in moments of contemplation.
Brigitte D’Annibale, B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The result, on view just in time for Frieze L.A., is like nothing you’ve ever seen. An imposing metal gate sourced from a Bali junkyard stands in front of the property, creating a dramatic reveal for visitors when the doors are finally opened.
The walls of the home are still boarded up in a patchwork of humble plywood. Visitors enter through a revolving sheet of glass that pivots to spin open.
Beyond it lies a two-story atrium, where D’Annibale has cut through to the basement below and installed a massive steel and glass skylight in the ceiling, from which hang spherical sculptures made from letters carved from reclaimed teak. The letter forms are references to the importance of communication, D’Annibale said.
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Oculus, and Amalgamation, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
She’s christened the skylight The Oculus, and the entire atrium feature, which is designed to be seen at different times of day as the light and shadow changes, is titled Amalgamation.
The rest of the first floor is something of a white cube. In it hang artworks by D’Annibale, including No Strings Attached, a 16-panel encaustic piece, and two pieces featuring canvas wrapped around darkened mirrors, inspired by the appearance of building materials that were delivered to the site.
There’s also a moody dining room installation titled Pigs in Zen, above which hangs The Killing Tree, a hollow, naturally occurring, sculpture of vines that once surrounded a tree trunk that died and rotted away.
Brigitte D’Annibale The Killing Tree, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
But the true marvel is what lies below, when one exits the side door and walks down a sculptural hand-poured concrete staircase to what was once the lower level of the home.
D’Annibale has completely opened it up to the backyard, covering the ground with 38,000 pounds of loose stone. Mounded beds planted with greenery and olive trees echo the shape of the mountains in the distance, and a sunken conversation pit beneath The Oculus is literally built out of the mud where the foundations once stood.
“Originally, I was going to carve out this area. I wanted it to be subterranean. After I excavated it, we had three weeks of incessant rain, so it became a mud pit,” D’Annibale said. “I decided to use mud as a medium. I mixed it with decomposed granite and road base with a binding material.”
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Basement, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“I thought it would be beautiful to be able to have conversations in this very grounding environment,” she added. “I don’t think there’s a much more humble material than sitting in the dirt.”
The overall effect of the installation’s lower level is reminiscent of a Japanese rock garden or Chinese scholar’s garden, which D’Annibale said is a reflection of the years she has spent in Southeast Asia.
Brigitte D’Annibale, with Amalgamation inside B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“I wanted to use the flow of the landscape to create this very holistic connection with nature,” she added.
Now that the ambitious project is completed, D’Annibale, Kingsley, and curator Elysia Borowy are beginning to formulate plans to activate the space. They envision performance events incorporating music and dance, and opportunities to host wide-ranging discussions around the conversation pit.
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Basement part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“This space is a vessel that Brigitte has created,” Kingsley said. “It’s so much bigger than one artist.”
Public visiting hours will be offered starting in June, with limited tours for registered guests during Frieze Week.
“This is just the beginning. This is designed to open up dialogue,” D’Annibale said. “It’s about immersion and interaction and connection.”
See more photos of B=f(P,E) below.
Brigitte D’Annibale The Oculus,part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Brigitte D’Annibale, Pigs in Zen part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Brigitte D’Annibale, Restraint 1, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Oculus, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Oculus, and Amalgamation, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Oculus, and The Basement, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Brigitte D’Annibale, B=f(P,E), 2023, detail. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Brigitte D’Annibale, The Oculus, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Brigitte D’Annibale, Entropy 1, Entropy 2, Entropy 3, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Brigitte D’Annibale, No Strings Attached, part of B=f(P,E), 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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When Frieze Los Angeles opens to the public this week, cultural stakeholders from all over will swarm the Santa Monica airport, seeking an intelligible narrative about the state of contemporary art—in a city famous for its lack of a coherent center. 
Indeed, L.A.’s marquee art institutions seem to be presenting very different pictures of what matters now. The Getty is devoting its contemporary show to conceptual photographer Uta Barth, while the Hammer celebrates Joan Didion and LACMA exhibits recent abstract acquisitions and artworks that trace African diasporic legacies.
L.A. gallerists, curators, and artists, too, have disparate ideas about which aesthetics are trending locally. If they can agree on one thing, however, it seems to be that artists are responding to or against the figurative mode that has, for nearly a decade, dominated contemporary art discourse. 
Daniel Gibson, Flower Head (2022). Courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.
“There’s a loosening up of paint styles in general,” said Esther Kim Varet, founder at Various Small Fires. Over the past couple years, Joshua Nathanson, one of her L.A.-based artists, has foregone stark, cartoonish outlines for hazy figures that blend with their backgrounds. This looser style has a reach far beyond the city’s limits. For Frieze’s online viewing room, Kim Varet will exhibit work by two other painters, Alvin Ong (based in London and Singapore) and Alex Foxton (Paris), who have also embraced more languid brushstrokes.  
The gallerist speculates that she and her collectors might be drawn to this kind of atmospheric work at this particular moment, valuing their own emotional responses more than they did pre-pandemic. Her client base is responding to “mood” and “loveliness” again, she says—to painting qua painting. Figurative work hasn’t completely disappeared, and abstraction hasn’t yet made a full-force comeback, but people are “getting a little more emotional” these days.
“It might be a pivot point,” she speculated. “There are so many other factors. My client base in Asia really loves figurative painting. Shifts and trends are really complex.” 
Ken Gun Min, Two Mothers (2022). Courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.
Seth Curcio, partner at Shulamit Nazarian, believes the pandemic has inspired local artists to move away from the figure as well, but in a different direction—towards landscape.
As indoor spaces shuttered across Los Angeles, artists meandered across hiking trails and their own neighborhoods, transmuting these experiences into new compositions. “Artists are using landscape to talk about social and cultural ideas,” Curcio said. They’re trying to “think about the world outside their studio and the world they’re building inside their studio, on their canvases.” 
As an example, Curcio cited the paintings of gallery artist Daniel Gibson, a local, whose “lush, psychedelic landscapes” feature imaginary deserts and very real, embedded concerns about migration and borders. Ken Gun Min, who settled in Los Angeles after living in Asia and Europe, creates imagined landscapes rooted in specific local sites: Buena Vista Park, Runyon Canyon, and Silverlake have all appeared in his canvases, transformed into queer utopias via thread, vintage beads, oil paint, and Korean pigment powder.
Annie Lapin, Light Folding (2022). Courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.
Finally, Annie Lapin amalgamates and digitally alters photographs and art historical imagery to create her own surreal, fragmented landscapes that evoke memories and dreams. According to Curcio, these artists are now thinking about the world in a way that’s dislodged from the body. “Landscape is a really fertile place to map those emotions,” he said.
Artist Nick Doyle also sees L.A. artists turning away from the body—but towards objects.
An Angeleno now based in New York, Doyle will exhibit collaged-denim-on-panel wall sockets at Reyes Finn’s Felix Art Fair presentation. He mentioned the work of local painters Mario Ayala, Sayre Gomez, and Kara Joselyn as emblematic of a flattened, airbrushed style that simultaneously references three major features of the Los Angeles landscape: cars, street signs, and film sets. The theatrical paintings of Justin John Green, he said, embrace a “romantic, Hollywood-esque quality.”
Nick Doyle, TBD (2023). Courtesy of Reyes Finn.
Doyle appreciates the atmospheric influences of the West and his hometown’s art history, relatively untethered to the intense East Coast legacies of minimalism and conceptualism. “What makes L.A.’s art scene interesting is that it’s unattached to longer art historical lineages and has room to expand into other visual languages,” he said. 
Zoe Lukov, cofounder at nonprofit Art in Common, also sees an environmentally conscious, surrealist trend rippling across the city’s art scene. “There’s proximity to film and major climate disaster,” she said. “It’s a surreal combination.”
Local artists are especially interested in themes related to the water, she finds. Fawn Rogers, Lukov noted, makes “lush, sexy paintings, often of oysters,” while Nicolette Miskhan’s canvases feature mermaids, undermining old tropes that have made the fantastical figures repositories “for shame, desire, and fear about the feminine.” Via performance, Deborah Scacco examines the body’s relationship to water. (During Frieze week, Art in Common will mount “Boil, Toil, and Trouble,” featuring work by all three artists.)
Nicolette Mishkan, The Protection Circle (2022). Photo: Anita Posada. Courtesy of Art in Common.
For his part, Felix Art Fair founder Dean Valentine believes the recent surrealist fad, along with the figurative arc, is coming to an end—at least from a market standpoint. “I think people are waiting to see what’s next,” he acknowledged. “I don’t think anyone’s seen over the horizon yet.”
If anything, he said, there’s a stronger disposition, among painters, towards “pleasingly colorful work.” Like Kim Varet, he thinks that collectors are turning towards more beautiful art. He conjectures that it’s an escape from worries about a slowing economy, conflict in Ukraine, climate change, and other global stressors. 
Valentine believes that as the city’s art scene has become ever-more global—as international blue chip galleries set up shop and the stylistic influence of artists and influential educators such as John Baldessari, Chris Burden, and Mike Kelley becomes more diluted—“L.A. art” loses some of its regional flavor. 
Fawn Rogers, Happy as a Clam (top) and The Most Beautiful Pearls Are Black (bottom, both 2021). Photo: Anita Posada. Courtesy of Art in Common.
Art advisor Irina Stark, on the other hand, continues to be astounded by the amount of painting in the city, thanks in part to its fantastic light. She noted a number of contemporary painters who have relocated to Los Angeles and made the city their home: Katherina Olschbaur, Simphiwe Ndzube (exhibiting in the Art in Common show), Veronica Fernandez (showing in Frieze Focus), Anna Valdez, Jonny Negron, Tala Madani (whose work is up at MOCA), Jill Mulleady, Katja Seib, and Claire Tabouret. 
Stark sees artists moving towards abstraction, but she also believes that ceramics and surrealism are still going strong. Like Lukov, she sees a “love for witchiness” across the city: “We’ve had figuration as a main trend for eight years, so I think it’s time to incorporate something new.” 
Debra Scacco, Channel (n.d.). Photo: Anita Posada. Courtesy of Art in Common.
Though painting trends may dominate the city’s conversation, Institute of Contemporary Art senior curator Amanda Sroka is focused on performance. Her institution just opened three solo exhibitions devoted to artists who explore sound: Jacqueline Kyomi Gork, Milford Graves, and Christine Sun Kim.
Sroka moved to Los Angeles this year and is still acquainting herself with the local art scene. “There is a real, thriving performance community here in Los Angeles,” she said, thanks to the L.A. spaces that support the medium (MOCA will also host Simone Forti dance performances during the fair week). 
Sroka also sees local artists using organic materials, integrating the earth into their practices—but she’s hesitant about calling out specific trends. Having just arrived, she is still wrapping her head around her new home.
“Los Angeles is dizzying and intoxicating,” she said. “As soon as you have your hand on the pulse of something, it’s changing.”
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