Featured Exhibitions | LA Art Show

2025 Programming will be announced next January

“I” of the Beholder: Dain Yoon
Presented by LP Gallery
Booth 1113/1212

Dain Yoon is a South Korean fine artist, currently based in New York City. Widely acclaimed for her illusion painting on her face and body, and her prolific work with a variety of media, Ms. Yoon explores the complex portrayal of raw emotion filtered through the unique personal diversity of each individual. Yoon has participated in a wide variety of collaborative projects. She has collaborated with artists, including Maurizio Cattelan, Halsey, and James Blake; worked with museums including the Tate Modern and the Van Gogh Museum; and garnered significant attention in media, appearing on The Ellen Degeneres Show and in publications such as Vogue, Dazed, TOILETPAPER, and The New York Times Magazine.

Yoon views her face as the strongest and most sensitive part of her body: a canvas on which she can deliver her most delicate emotions. Her eyes in particular have always been a key object or primary focal point of her works. For this work, Ms. Yoon chose the title ““I” of the Beholder” to reflect the inherently and unavoidably unique way that each person processes both art and emotion. She used time-lapses of herself in an anxious and agitated state to capture the full spectrum of the emotions revealed through her eyes. Yoon chose large format oil paintings as the medium with the intention to evoke the same feeling of unease in the viewer. The paintings are presented without wood paneling, the same format in which they were created, to convey the raw and delicate nature of the work.

Young Masters
Presented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery
Booth 1401

Young Masters is a not-for-profit international initiative which was launched in 2009 by gallerist Cynthia Valianti Corbett, founder of Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Our mission is to support emerging artists from across the world, bringing their work to a wider audience through a triennial Art Prize independently judged by an illustrious panel. Young Masters has an international programme of touring exhibitions and fairs as well as maintaining a vibrant online presence that showcases our wide network.

This unique initiative highlights emerging artists of any gender, age, or nationality, working in any media, whose work responds to the art of the past.

In 2014 the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramic Prize was added to focus more attention on the growing interest in the collection of contemporary craft. 2017 saw the launch of the inaugural Young Masters Emerging Women Award. The fifth edition and 10th Anniversary Exhibition of the Prize took place in October 2019. In 2023 Young Masters returned after Covid-19 with its 6th edition of the Prize and its most culturally diverse and woman led open call yet with 75% of applicants being female-identifying artists.

Young Masters has provided a launching pad for over 350 artists alumni from all over the world. Important alumni include British ceramicist and curator Matt Smith, British painter Flora Yukhnovich, South-African artists Gigs Kgole and ceramicist Lucille Lewin, artist duo Ghost of a Dream and US-based Iranian Azita Moradkhani.

The Soul of Your City
Presented by Fabrik Projects Gallery
Booth 1404

Welcome to ‘The Soul of Your City’ exhibition, a unique visual journey that brings to life the diverse and intimate essences of cities from around the globe.

This exhibition is the culmination of a global photography competition organized by Fabrik Projects Gallery in Los Angeles, aimed at capturing the hidden spirit and true identity of cities and communities through the lenses of local photographers.

‘The Soul of Your City’ competition was born out of a desire to explore and reveal the unseen aspects of urban living. We invited photographers worldwide to look beyond the familiar landmarks and tourist attractions and instead focus on the aspects of city life that are often overlooked. This included capturing the subtle interplay of light and shadow in the alleys, the vibrant life in local markets, the architectural heritage in the streets, and the candid moments of everyday life.

Our call for entries resonated with photographers from various corners of the world, each bringing their unique perspective and creative approach. The resulting submissions are a rich tapestry of images that tell stories of culture, history, community, and personal experiences within urban settings.

The works showcased in this exhibition are the winners of the competition, selected for their exceptional ability to convey the ‘soul of their cities.’ These images are not just photographs — they are windows into the diverse, dynamic, and intricate tapestries of urban life. They invite viewers to go on a visual journey, traveling continents and cultures, to experience the essence of cities as seen through the eyes of their residents.

This exhibition at the LA Art Show presents these winning entries, offering attendees an opportunity to engage with and appreciate the myriad facets of urban environments. It’s an honor to bring these perspectives to such a prestigious platform, allowing the public to connect with cities’ souls through the art of photography.

We thank all the photographers who participated in the ‘Soul of Your City’ competition and congratulate the winners whose work is exhibited here. Their contributions have made this exhibition a testament to the power of photography in capturing and conveying the beauty of our world’s cities.

Visible Sound: Wish Into the Wind by Choi Sori
Presented by Art in Dongsan
Booth 1111/1210

Art in Dongsan is pleased to feature a special live art performance by acclaimed artist Choi Sori. “Visible Sound: Wish Into the Wind,” is a multimedia piece that invites us to reflect on the origins of life and the majesty of nature.

Through drumming and manipulation of metal surfaces, Choi Sori creates an abstract interplay of light, color, and sound that seems to materialize the invisible energies that animate our planet. The surfaces reflect rays of light in shifting patterns depending on the movement of viewers within the space.

Sori conveys the idea that all matter and energy in the world has its own essence and message. He sees himself as a creative messenger, translating these messages into perceptual experiences that harness sound, rhythm, and the visual arts.

This performance also represents Sori’s lifelong creative philosophy of harmonious coexistence with the natural environment. Created in coordination with the seasonal changes in his native Korea over multiple years, the Wind series, Kalpa, and Fire Paintings on view alongside the performance emerge from a meditative collaboration between artist and Mother Nature.

We hope this performance and exhibition provides a mindful escape from everyday concerns, reminding us of the ephemeral beauty of the natural forces that sustain life on our precious planet.

Juan Miguel Quiñones
Presented by Pigment Gallery
Booth 813/912

Quiñones is a self-taught artist who began in the field of restoration, an approach that helped him to understand the know-how of the old masters, learning all the traditional techniques of stone carving developed from ancient Rome to the Renaissance. An observer and connoisseur of the popular, Quiñones combines his particular sense of humor with the use of precious stones, the most refined technical skill and a profound knowledge of the materials he works with to create trompe l’oeil works that break down the barrier between the everyday object and the work of art.

The artist applies his work in stone to postmodern languages and themes, present urban languages that swing between illusion and memory and allows him to delve into antagonistic concepts such as reality, fiction, artifice or verisimilitude. Consciously, his works elude a direct or closed interpretation, forcing the viewer to project his or her own memories. Very rich in meanings, the evocative object and the material-conceptual trompe l’oeil are the most important material-conceptual. The references used go beyond the recurrent themes of urban art, hence the enormous complexity of Quiñones’ work. As iconic skateboards or surfboards represent elements detonated from evocation. The warm afternoons of southern Spain, from El Palmar to Estepona. But they are also signs of the end of pubescent innocence and the beginning of a new period, adolescence, in which human beings are reluctant to leave forever the domains of playfulness.

The World House Mural
Presented by Robert Vargas
Booth 309

In honor of Black History Month, acclaimed artist Robert Vargas will create this mural on site inspired by one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last books, The World House.

King imagines the world as a large house in which we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace. We are facing converging global crises – a horrific pandemic, the growing threat of world war, climate change, inequality both in the U.S. and globally, the continuing scourge of systemic racism and tensions in the U.S. brought on by elections later this year.

Vargas brings his dynamic approach to portraiture and re-imagines this inherited large house on canvas. As King writes, “A great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together — Black and white, easterner and westerner, gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu – a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.” Robert Vargas brings necessary attention and healing through this mural in the spirit of mindfulness, and creating art for the greater good of mankind.

2023

Evocation In Light: Philip Vaughan
Presented by bG Gallery
Booth 1303

English artist Philip Vaughan first became interested in neon and light art while at Chelsea Art School in London, during a course on the theory of light and color. He was intrigued when he learned that paint mixes differently than light does, as well as by the idea of using light as a medium itself to make art. Combining this with his love of sculpture and installation, he began experimenting with all three.

While at Chelsea art school, he created a piece where three incandescent light sources spun and projected colored light on the walls, mixing the light’s colors as they spun and combined. Later he read a book by Cornwall Klein, who was experimenting with light projection and synesthesia.

Around this time, Vaughan attended a lecture given by Buckminster Fuller and shortly after that started to experiment with geodesic structures himself. He made a group of models of them and eventually started to incorporate linear lights. This work culminated in a sculpture for the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank, the Neon Tower whose neon lights would dim and change according to the speed and direction of the wind, reflecting its environment. After building the sculpture for the Hayward Gallery Neon Tower, he also built an 80-foot diameter hemispherical inflatable dome theater with projected light shows for entrepreneur and filmmaker John Bloomfield.

Since moving to the United States, he worked for a while at Walt Disney Imagineering where he continued to learn about lighting, theatrics, computer controls and construction. Vaughan has continued to create art and experiment with neon, sculpture, and architecture as art and technology alike evolve. He continues to plan and build public sculptures, using light and other media.

Donde Voy: Jin Hyu Lee
Presented by J & J Art, Inc.
Booth 401

The artist is focused on how to express the objects that he sees, interpreted with different perspectives, by trying to recreate the meaning of the things scattered around him. Jin Hyu Lee enjoys experimenting, using different methods, such as splitting the space in canvas, attempting to escape from the ordinary views, searching for new dimensions of objects around him.

His works are blended sentiment derived from the mixture of conventional painting and digitized culture that has become the fact of life, with historical and ethnic traces. He finds a new way of painting, which is based on the classical way of thought.

Launch Intention: Griffin Loop
Presented by Fabrik Projects
Show Entrance

Griffin Loop is a sculpture artist who creates large scale installations that have been commissioned and collected in both private and public settings across the United States. Griffin uses his platform as an artist to engage communities and youth.

“Launch Intention” is based around the symbol of a paper airplane and is used to support individuals and groups in the act of setting intention, sharing with the greater collective and launching into action. The artist has installed and programmed large scale “paper” airplanes in communities and schools across the United States.

A paper airplane represents youthful innocence and fun. It is one of the first things we create as children and launch into the world. The launch intention project based around this childhood symbol takes us back to that carefree imagination and freedom. It stands for tapping into the intuitive self and truth we all have. Embracing the dreams and path we are ultimately supposed to take. A platform to solidify these dreams and share with each other and the world. A symbol for optimism and hope. Self. Community. Support. Vulnerability and accountability. Launch Intention is a reminder for all to free yourself. Set intention and launch into action and the world.

Searching In No Man’s Land: Julio Vaquero
Presented by Pigment Gallery
Booth 1021

Julio Vaquero (Barcelona 1958) has developed his work as a painter around the world of culture, knowledge and his confrontation with the experience of time.

His large-format paintings and installations have been shown in different exhibitions on realism, such as “Realism in Catalonia”, Barcelona 2000; “Mimesis et inventio”, Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen, Germany 2002; “Visions of Reality”, Caja Canarias Foundation, Tenerife Spain 2014.

Also in 2014, Vaquero presented his work “The End of Appearances” at the “Centre d’Art Santa Mónica” in Barcelona, a large installation created with solidified paint that confronted the experience of contemplating the past and the horror of time.

His latest personal exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery in Barcelona and Madrid have shown his drawings on tracing paper in large format, where Vaquero works with materials created by himself, looking back at the history of painting “Stolen Museum” Barcelona 2018 and on the ambiguity of the realistic representation “Memories of the Physical World”; Madrid 2020.

On this occasion, Vaquero presents his latest gouaches in small format on the ambiguity of the idea of identity, creating digitally manipulated faces whose changing and brittle material quality seems to evoke the feeling of fragility of our existence.

Raintype: Lorenzo Marini
Presented by Bruce Lurie Gallery
Booth 1013/1112

This immersive installation, by Lorenzo Marini, is inspired by a rainy day. Only here the drops of rain never fall, but remain suspended in a linguistic universe waiting to be discovered. Letters only become such when joined with other letters and take the form of the word. They acquire meaning in their linear composition. In this work of art, the letters never touch land, but remain in the world of ideas, of the possible, of the potential. They are in no hurry to touch the ground, they are in no hurry to become a word, a sentence, a discourse. They love the freedom of space and the suspension of time. They aspire to become fragments of eternity.

Wings Of Grace: Wonsook Kim
Presented by Gallery Elim
Booth 402

Wonsook is both a painter of magical, vivid landscapes, and a storyteller of the universality of human hardships. Her flowing images refuse to yield to eye-catching trends and instead engage her viewers through heartfelt stories.

Her quality lies in her strong personal style that carries both the pureness of a child’s touch and the expert craftsmanship of an experienced artist and colorist. Wonsook’s work instructs us to appreciate the joys of life and to persist in the face of difficulties.

Drawing from experiences as a Korean immigrant and embracing an introspective attitude, Wonsook has created a visual diary of her life that many people, regardless of their identities, can not only be immersed in but also relate to.

Awarded for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, her work was made into stamps and contributed to the transformation of the University of Illinois into Kim Won-sook University. Her work is Magical Realism. Through her work, she represents Korean sensibility and presents us with an artistic fantasy that we must not lose.

2022

W.T.C: Concrete Abstract I Shai Kremer
Presented by Art Bond
Booth 399

For younger Americans born after the attacks, 9/11 is not a memory lived, but history learned. Twenty years later, we remember those who were killed, as we honor the service and sacrifice of the brave first responders who ran toward danger to save others. By showing this body of work, we want to encourage reflection and help ensure that a new generation learns how, together, we met unimaginable tragedy and unfathomable loss with hope, resilience, and unity.

An evocation of site, a remembrance of tragedy, a progression towards healing – Shai Kremer’s Concrete Abstract series at once aims for individual and universal response to the destruction and rebuilding of the World Trade Towers following September 11th, 2001. Kremer describes his Concrete Abstract series as a means to “pay homage to America, to New York, to their trauma and their recovery.” The artist evokes the renovations and rebuilding of a once devastated sight as representative of a fresh start and ongoing therapeutic process for New York City.

Like his past series, Kremer maintains “a post-traumatic gaze to the cityscape of Manhattan – and by extrapolation, to the sociological landscape of America.”

Installation: Personal Artifacts I Alexandra Dillon
Presented by bG Gallery
Booth 1216

In this project, artist Alexandra Dillon explores character, personality and emotion by painting imagined portraits on used tools and other implements – recycled from swap meets and flea markets.

Tools such as axes and cleavers, hint at hidden and repressed feelings of rage and revenge, while her tiny lock and key sculptures offer hope that each of us can find the solution to our personal struggles.

Her old master style faces on coal shovels, cleverly employ the ruffled base as an Elizabethan collar, and circular saw blades carry similar faces of strong women – badass babes whose time has come.

Her installation piece “Mood Swings” is a kinetic sculpture on two large shovels that are balanced on a mount that allows the viewer to manually move them revealing a face that changes from a smile to a frown as it swings on its axis.

Nature of Providence I Séverin Guelpa
Curated by Laura Ayala; Marisa Caichiolo
Presented by Building Bridges Art Exchange
Booth 1300

Building Bridges Art Exhcnage’s Artist in Residence Program provides artists’ with a unique challenge by offering them the opportunity to create, in record time, a site specific body of work which requires a full time commitment. The program is an invitation for experimentation and research, which is carried out with curatorial accompaniment that supports the artist’s concepts, and provides different ways of exploring their own work.

For this year’s residency, artist Séverin Guelpa worked in a wide range of mediums: installations, objects, sounds, and photography, while exploring ideas of documentation, gathering, and analyzing life in the desert, an area he has worked in since 2014. This exhibition is the result of the artist’s exploration during the residency period, and deals with an unnamed phantom, a specter that haunts or perhaps shines a ghostly light onto the inner soul behind “the desert”. This mirage confuses and fascinates him; but despite this, he decides to explore the physical and emotional territory. Throughout the residency, Guelpa plunged into the wild, untamed landscape of the desert, the boulders, the iconic Joshua trees, and the vast terrain opening onto the Milky Way above. As a conceptual artist, Guelpa focused on a survey of the territory, its geography, and the underlying tensions and fragility of living systems in the desert.

The high desert has long been a refuge for intrepid creative characters and stories. It’s a place that attracts dreamers, undeterred by the inhospitable environment. Séverin Guelpa’s artistic proposal gives us the opportunity to access multiple layers of interpretation but, above all, to see the effects on people who decide to experience the desert’s apparent emptiness. With this exhibition, Guelpa connects the undeniable and surreal vistas of freestanding home structures with the relationship between the land, nature’s resources, and private property. He gives new meaning to the debris that has been cleansed by the desert, and brings new possibilities of composition that explores the forces of balance in chaos.

Shining Light in the Darkness
Aging Out: A Community Project I J.P. Gonçalves
Presented by Connect Contemporary
Booth 408

Aging Out seeks to visually capture the reality of a social injustice that, too often, lies hidden in the shadows. Viewers are invited to consider seven portraits — each portraying someone who, upon turning eighteen years old, has either “aged out” of foster care or would be “aging out” if a family had not gotten involved.

Each portrait is made of 3,000 squares. Each square is uniquely placed and angled either towards or away from the light source. The image created is only made of reflected light or shadows cast. In total, the 21,000 squares represent the amount of youth who age out of the American foster care system each year. Every eighteen seconds, the central light source is extinguished, revealing the face of a youth who’s endured a journey in this system, along with a poignant statistic illuminated by a smaller light. This cyclical lighting and extinguishing temporally represents the dreaded moment where, upon turning eighteen years old, our nation’s most vulnerable young adults are abandoned by the state and rendered subject to the mercy of the unjust societal forces that create these sobering statistics.

J.P. Gonçalves’ distinct technique uses shadow and light to expose the image, the message, and ultimately, a social inequity that deserves a well-defined place in the minds of compassionate and justice-oriented people with a heart for leveling the playing field so that all young people, regardless of their origins, have a fair chance at creating a meaningful life for themselves.

Born in 1979 in Rio de Janeiro, multimedia artist J.P. Gonçalves moved to the United States at the dawn of the new millennium. He attended school for architecture at Universidade Santa Úrsula in Brazil and later took courses in Industrial Design at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.

Memory of a Space
An Immersive Experience
Photography I Jessie Chaney
Exhibition Design I Chris Davies
Presented by Fabrik Projects
Booth 1025/1124

Jessie Chaney’s ongoing series Memory of a Space brings into focus numerous forlorn and overlooked sites the artist has encountered in her travels. These abandoned spaces are remnants of progress and change, empty buildings which provide evidence of previous inhabitants. Whether changes of fortune or the construction of new nearby highway leaves such places cut off and ultimately deserted, they still hold many telltale pointers to the lives and loves that once filled them.

Chaney finds beauty within the ruins and detritus that society leaves behind. Rather than mourn what has been lost, she celebrates the little details that provide glimpses into the past. This immersive installation both houses and echoes her artworks. Glimpses of other artworks appear as one navigates the space, and scrims provide veiled views though grimy windows, like those the artist encounters when peering into long-overlooked rooms. While Chaney’s photographs are essentially devoid of people, they still evoke an aura of humanity. The images tell stories through what has been left behind, fallen into ruin and often subsequently unofficially re-adorned with contemporary imagery. If her imagery conveys an air of nostalgia, it is not intended to be facile. Memory of a Space draws attention to the rapid changes in modern life, while celebrating small mementos of civilization.

Chaney began this body of work in earnest before the term ‘COVID-19’ was coined. Since then, as the global pandemic has continued, the series has assumed an additional gravitas, not influenced by prevailing political views or conspiracy theories. Focusing on the impact of societal change, Chaney’s abandoned spaces now might be seen as possible safe havens for the future.