Frieze Los Angeles Diary: hockey hotties, roaming Rami and Simon sells – The Art Newspaper

Pucker up

One of the buzziest works at Felix Art Fair is a painting showing a scene in Heated Rivalry, the steamy Canadian streaming hit. Following the romantic relationship between two closeted professional hockey players, the six-episode series has made overnight stars of the leads Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams. At Megan Mulrooney’s leafy poolside cottage, the Austin-based artist RF. Alvarez’s painting A Softness (2026) depicts a tender scene of Storrie and Williams straight from the show. Alvarez’s work renders queer life, often in the American Southwest, in Old Masters-influenced scenes. He turned to Heated Rivalry for inspiration while creating new work for Felix, his dealer Mulrooney tells The Art Newspaper. “We were talking about this cultural moment we’re in, where [the show] really resonates not only with gay men, but with women,” Mulrooney says. “Telling a story about queer love—about love that is forbidden—really touches his heart.”

Seeing stars

Celebrities of stage and screen showed up again on the first public day of Frieze Los Angeles on Friday. Among the A-listers spotted in the aisles were Bridesmaids comedienne Maya Rudolph, Law & Order: Organized Crime detective Christopher Meloni, Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek and comedian and collector David Alan Grier. Art-world celebrities at Frieze included Neville Wakefield, Alison and Betye Saar, Michael Govan and Edythe Broad. We were especially tickled when Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, excitedly stopped one of our staff members carrying a Studio Museum tote bag to take a photo. Meanwhile, over at Post-Fair, Beastie Boy Mike D could be seen absorbing the chill vibes.

Gavel for good causes

Simon de Pury led a riveting live auction inside a private Hollywood club on Thursday evening, as celebrities and art luminaries gathered to fundraise for victims of both Jamaica’s Hurricane Melissa and the Los Angeles wildfires. Titled “Get Up Stand Up: Artists For Jamaica and Los Angeles” and organised by Community Organized Relief Effort (Core), the auction featured lots by Caribbean artists including Alvaro Barrington and Tavares Strachan, as well as works by Urs Fischer and Henry Taylor, and one five-night stay at Diplo’s private compound, Pompey, in Jamaica. After a lively bidding war with top model Winnie Harlow, the famed music producer took home a 2024 Savannah Baker photograph for $8,000. Fischer’s painting Lifeboat (2024) sold for $200,000.

The Birds’-eye view

Art-world cognoscenti ascended to the West Hollywood hilltop known as “The Birds” on Wednesday night to celebrate the Serpentine Americas Foundation at the home of members and longtime supporters Sybil Robson Orr and Matthew Orr. The Serpentine’s indefatigable artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and chief executive Bettina Korek received high praise from Robson Orr, while the philanthropists Maja Hoffmann and Eugenio López Alonso, the curators Beatrix Ruf and Piper Marshall, the auctioneer Simon de Pury, and artists including Miles Greenberg, Lita Albuquerque, Suzanne Lacey, Mary Weatherford, Refik Anadol, Alex Israel and Jonas Wood basked in the shifting glow of a James Turrell Skyspace installation. The Art Newspaper’s representatives spent the night sneaking food to the Orrs’ pup.

Rob Pruitt-free flea

As Los Angeles gallery-goers made the rounds along Western Avenue on Tuesday night—and an army of black-vested valets milled about outside David Zwirner’s Luc Tuymans opening—the artist Rob Pruitt’s fan-favourite Flea Market returned to the city for a two-day-only extravaganza, hosted by the dealer James Fuentes. Rather than presenting in the usual white-cube gallery, though, dozens of artists offered their wares on folding tables in an empty former furniture store. Savvy shoppers could purchase affordable works directly from local artists, like Ry Rocklen, who took part in the Pruitt’s first Los Angeles flea and was returning with another edition of his intricately detailed porcelain tiles, cast from his personal clothing. Sadly, Pruitt himself couldn’t make it, after snowy weather left him stuck in New York.