Only three days long and with a limited roster of 31 galleries—including PPOW, White Columns, Tomio Koyama Gallery and Untitled Love, an art bookstore—Post-Fair enjoyed strong opening days in its sophomore year. Notable guests included the artist Paul McCarthy, Mike D of the Beastie Boys, curatorial staff from the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the collectors Beth Rudin DeWoody and Maja Hoffmann and the writer and translator Ann Goldstein.
“We’re still the new kids on the block,” says the gallerist Chris Sharp, who organises the fair and works with a small team of three employees. “But it feels like we’re more on the map, more anticipated this year.” This year at Post-Fair, his gallery is showing small works by Edgar Ramirez, who won the Frieze Impact Prize in 2023.
On Friday afternoon (27 February), a gentle hum filled the space as visitors wandered from stand to stand. The gallerist Cole Solinger, founder of the San Francisco- and Los Angeles-based House of Seiko, noted that the flow of visitors increases in the afternoon as Frieze crowds move west from the Santa Monica airport.
The House of Seiko stand at Post-Fair features the trompe l’oeil sculptures and paintings of John Hodgkinson, which were inspired by a stay at a ranch for feral horses in Lompoc, California. Hodgkinson’s diminutive sculptures of fence slats encased in metal sit propped against the open windows.
“We chose this fair for its broad array of amazing positions and practices represented,” says Ace Ehrlich, who co-directs the Los Angeles-based gallery Ehrlich Steinberg with Tabitha Steinberg. The team sold around half of its presentation of moss-agate and sterling-silver sculptures by Joel Otterson, a local artist and former faculty member in the ceramics department at University of California, Los Angeles. “We’ve been very lucky to introduce his work to a new and younger audience,” Ehrlich says.
The fair features an open floor plan and minimal architectural intervention in its home inside an old post office, which participants say puts collectors and visitors at ease.
Commerce and camaraderie
“I feel that Post-Fair is a little bit more curated. It’s a good lineup and good-quality galleries,” says Jonny Tanna, who co-directs the London-based gallery Harlesden High Street with Sophie Barrett-Pouleau. Their gallery’s stand features the work of Antonio Lechuga, a Dallas-based artist who works with Mexican textiles, and Paul Flores, who works with archival family photos and graphics pulled from Mexican culture in Los Angeles (where he is based).
“We have a great relationship with Chris Sharp. There’s a sense of camaraderie and friendship here,” Barrett-Pouleau says. The fair gives gallerists carte blanche, resulting in high-trust relationships that benefit both gallerists and organisers.
“I really applaud the organisers, Sharp and his team, for not subdividing every stand, stuffing the space with a million galleries, making it a circus,” Ehrlich says. “We chose this fair because when collectors find us here, they’re already in a great mood because they’re in a space that’s elegant, open and navigable.”
