We're just a week away from Frieze LA, when East Coast dealers and local artists alike descend upon the Santa Monica Airport, but this isn't Renée Reizman's first rodeo. Since the critic and artist moved to the area almost 15 years ago, she's witnessed blue-chip New York galleries set up shop and sideline the irreverent, DIY spaces that shape the local art scene. Without these spaces, Reizman writes, she would not have discovered what art can be outside of the white cube.
Before Zona Maco's launch in 2003 consolidated Mexico City as a global arts capital, artist-run spaces like La Panadería and Temístocles 44 attracted a generation of Mexican artists-among them Minerva Cuevas, Sofía Táboas and Pablo Vargas Lugo-interested in developing their practices beyond a commercial context through installations, self-published periodicals and time-based media. In the 1990s, the city's artist-run spaces created important blueprints for dozens of independent and underground venues that animate the contemporary arts scene across Mexico today. Bold and unconventional works coming out of that ecosystem will be on display across the city at three important fairs during Art Week: Salón Acme, Clavo and Material Fair.
Beyond Frieze, of course, is a vast parallel art world, with thousands of unrepresented artists and curators keen to realise their big ideas. Hypha Studios has for some years been finding vacant property in cities around the UK to provide free exhibition and studio space to artists, curators and other creatives. This week it launched Hypha Curates, an online sales platform. Ben talks to the non-executive director of Hypha Studios, Will Jennings.
BCMT Gallery is an artist-forward gallery championing craft and the processes and people behind it. Based out of Kingston, New York, the gallery was founded by artist and furniture maker Joshua Vogel and Blackcreek Mercantile & Trading Co. co-founder Kelly Zaneto. BCMT Gallery has sought out a growing collective of artists who share in the investigation of the elemental-offering both functional and collectible works.