Six weeks after the deadly wildfires ravaged Los Angeles, destroying homes and property, the city’s art community united to successfully mount the return of the Felix LA art fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the launch of the new Post-Fair at the Old Santa Monica Post Office.
The seventh edition of Felix LA, which took place February 19-23, showcased over 60 exhibitors from around the world in the poolside cabanas and tower suites of the historic hotel, while the inaugural Post-Fair, which ran February 20–22, featured 29 local, national, and international art galleries and project spaces in the landmarked building’s sprawling interior.
After surveying hundreds of artworks in various media, here are eight artists who should be on every alert art collector’s acquisition list.
7. Harry Gould Harvey IV, presented by P·P·O·W at Post-Fair
A self-taught artist who claims to have dropped out of high school after being in special education classes most of the time, Harry Gould Harvey IV got his first big break with a 2021 solo show at Bureau gallery on New York’s Lower East Side. Reviewed in Art in America, the critic described his work as “devotional but also a little diabolical.” A maker of mystical diagrammatic drawings displayed in hand-built frames and Gothic sculptures incorporating found objects, he is also the co-founder of the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, a creative startup connecting the global contemporary art world to the working-class community of Fall River, Massachusetts, where Harvey was born and still lives. Following a one-person exhibition at P·P·O·W in 2023, the gallery presented a solo booth at the fair of esoteric drawings, including 777 E’Art’hly Dimensions (Burnt Offering), a clever symmetrical piece celebrating the seven manners of holy love.