Blog of "L.A. Art Week 2026 and 99CENT)"

A note on solidarity—as I write this, the US-Israeli killing machine continues to annihilate. My heart is with Iran. May Western imperialism collapse and the entire empire fall… No amount of art discourse comes above this.

Manic! That’s how I was feeling. I didn’t go to any of the actual fairs (cuz honestly you don’t need to), but I went to about 10ish fair adjacent happenings in LA and experienced shock… delight… confusion… everything in between…

I started my art week rendezvous Monday night at untitled (halo)’s performance of Ryan Trecartin’s BUCKLE YUP: CUE SHOES at the Kiko Kostadinov store on Western. It took me 40 minutes to find parking and I had 3 cups of complimentary white wine. Trecartin was not present (as far as I know—I had grandly misassumed that there would be some showing of Trecartin’s video work that I was dying to see), but it’s okay cuz untitled (halo) was great. I had the most fun when I was getting my third cup of wine and impulsively asked the Kiko Kostadinov bartender if he was single and he said no but that I was “really pretty” and he was “flattered” and we laughed about it and wished each other well and it was honestly a beautiful, vulnerable moment…

Fast forward to Friday, my day began at 99CENT—a show by Barry McGee and his “100 closest friends” in partnership with galleries Jeffrey Deitch and The Hole. When you first walk inside that pink 99 cent store on Wilshire, you’re hit with a distinct smell that’s a mix between the stale scent you’d expect from a defunct 99¢ store and the light b.o. radiating off the mass of bodies in there with you (doesn’t help that the weather has been in the high 80s—in fahrenheit, clarifying for all my readers in better parts of the world where celsius actually means something other than an energy drink). But what you experience in the nose is quickly eclipsed by what you’re intaking through the eyes. You’re visually bombarded by just a million artworks sprawled across the floor, the walls, atop the cash register (even video works playing from the cash register screen), the ceiling, and inside the freezer sections, patiently situated amidst the many people (somewhat slack-jawed) weaving between it all inside this grungy retail space built to sell cheap mass-produced goods.

Now to quote my Create Mode post that inspired this piece,

“I witnessed the "skaters" people [by “people” I mean DIVA CORP who had posted about the skaters on their IG story] were talking about — every time they did a trick there would be an awkward pause and then a small woot and some light clapping. The reaction was so unsure and the moment was almost underwhelming but also endearing because it was awkward and honestly you literally can’t help but have fun because the inside of the store is just Pure Spectacle and the sheer mass of art and objects to see in there meets the viewing-pace of a public whose majority would identify as having fried dopamine receptors like the experience of consuming the art in there requires my eyes to glaze over slightly the way they do when I’m watching Reels and like I really can’t hate that because it satiates every need to see More More More New New New…”

The overwhelming “chaos” of sorts is certainly an entertaining, sensorial experience the way the zoo or even Disneyland is. With the skaters, graffiti, floor-to-ceiling cardboard structures, and grime all in that one abandoned store (“abandoned” being disputable here because allegedly it was previously occupied by mutual aid groups), there’s definitely this street aesthetic and post-apocalyptic vibe happening. I befriended one of Barry McGee’s “100 closest friends” in the aisle he was working out of. Through him, I learned that the show actually came to be kinda randomly and is very much tied to the graffiti scene. It’s funny because Barry comes up on Google as an “American artist” but this show was less about him and his artist friends than it was about him and his graffiti friends. The show supposedly started as this casual invite from Barry to just throw some stuff up in this empty store with these graffiti guys but because the store was too big, they got like galleries, brands, and other people on board—it’s all a fuzzy, haphazard web of both loose and tight connections but I think that’s the appeal. Also don’t quote me on this because this is secondhand information.

My new friend (who I’ll call “G”) is also a graffiti writer and he said that’s how he got to know Barry since Barry is one of those legends in the scene I guess (Barry’s tag is “Twist”). G had to teach me all this new vocab… No we don’t call ourselves “graffiti artists”... We just say “graffiti writers” like “yo what do you write?” and then you’ll say “I write _____” and the blank is your tag name—the name that you graffiti. G was running the aisle that had art and clothes made by himself, his friends, works from John Doe gallery, and merch from NYC-based brand Homerun. I ended up going back to the show again on Sunday when the Anti-Fascist Zine Fair was happening so that I could gather this intel. G introduced me to the guy who runs Homerun (who is also a writer but I can’t remember his tag) that’s like this buff, charismatic guy with nice teeth who supposedly had G and some other dudes doing pushups in the aisle the day before (similar to the skaters it’s like spontaneous performance art but not really). That was the day they had already done the “5k Run Against Fascism” from the Nike-funded Homerun x John Doe Gallery popup on West Adams all the way back to 99CENT on Wilshire. It all contributes to the What Is Even Happening feeling of it all.

G and I debated about the show calling itself anti-fascist (with many artworks shitting on Trump, ICE, etc. too), clashing with things like the Nike collaboration, displacement of the mutual aid groups there, and many of the galleries in or promoting the show still being these larger white cube galleries whose clients are probably in the Epstein files. While my personal opinion is that there’s definitely a reduction of anti-fascism to an aesthetic or spectacle experience happening (Walter Benjamin tap in), I was comforted by the conversations I had with the folks running zine booths there who are actually engaged in mutual aid groups and a Real Praxis. I guess it should still stand to mean something that an event calling itself anti-fascist drew such a large crowd that there was a line to get in that Sunday. Glass half full… Glass half empty… You choose… At the end of the day, what I’m satisfied with is this feeling that I’ve cracked open some kind of secret, guarded underbelly of LA—the graffiti scene—and its ties to the greater art world here.

If I wasn’t already over my word limit, I’d really get into the other great shows I saw but here’s my blurb of honorable mentions:

Sayre Gomez at David Kordansky (Precious Moments). As a city, we will never tire of art with a keenly LA Aesthetic, and frankly neither will I. I’ve always believed in divine coincidences but when I just so happened to see the real Play Pen building after seeing Gomez’s Playpen (2025) painting earlier that day, it felt like a kiss from the universe. Truly.

Ryan Trecartin’s visiting artist lecture at the UCLA grad studios in Culver City. This time I got to see Trecartin in the flesh. He screened a new video piece (funded by Fondazione Prada I think) that featured the uncanny post-millennial personalities of his late-2000s-era work but this time their faces and movements were being morphed and mutated by AI. Love his vibe. Not sure how I feel about the AI direction. Don’t even want to talk about how nice the studio space was compared to mine that’s on main campus. I have no space for envy in my heart.
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The Worst Rave In The World at And/Or Gallery presented with Dem Passwords. And/Or is one of the most special places in the world for browser-based artists like me or really anyone who has ever cracked open a book about Net Art. Legends like Olia Lialina, JODI, Cory Arcangel, and Petra Cortright have been inside those Pasadena walls. The Worst Rave In The World was an installation of animatronics and multi-channel videos by Matt Barton and Extreme Animals (Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman). From the show notes: “The show plunders from the failures and noise of contemporary culture, which, when recombined, is no longer bad or good…” It’s truly the worst rave in the world, but also possibly the best rave in the world? The figures dance in this clunky, jerky way that is so pathetic yet endearing that you feel for them as if they were human. By the end of art week, I felt like the slumped figure in the back gallery—there’s a realism to this “rave” because yeah exactly there’s always going to be someone k-holing in a dark corner.

Maya Man’s performance lecture StarQuest. This isn’t the exact wording, but I was most struck by the line, “It isn’t about Images and the Real. It’s about Images and Power, and who gets to win…” There were references to the reality TV show Dance Moms, Addison Rae, Charli D’Amelio, the renegade, Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, and the world of competitive dance that is all too familiar to me too. I have a picture of me doing #TiltTuesday around somewhere. Of all the artists working with AI, Maya is the only one I can really get behind. [There’s more I want to say so I shall save it for a future review perhaps!!!]

Sizzler as part of Wilshire Online (on the same block as 99CENT) curated by Grant Edward Tyler. Inside of that dim forest green interior of an old Sizzler restaurant, there are works adorning the booths, the walls, and a particularly eye-catching light installation inside what used to be the salad bar. 99CENT had a more energetic bustle that kept you constantly moving in the space, while Sizzler was more still and conducive for a hang-out vibe. People were perched in the booths and against the walls chatting, having a smoke or a beer outside… Fab.

Wondering what the landlord for these vacant retail buildings on that particular strip of Wilshire thinks about the art world and this compulsion to show artwork in these defunct spaces… What you feel inside these spaces is kinda what you feel when you’re on Main Street inside Disneyland. Non-places that are imbued in a mysticism yet haunted by the Real—the ghosts of the actual Sizzler restaurant, 99¢ store, the Colorado and Missouri towns that Main Street is based on… These shows felt like temporary shelters for art (and the people who want to see it) that have their appeal in the post-apocalyptic, grungy aesthetic of it all that exists as the “cool” “edgy” alternative to the clean, glossy fairs across the city. You’re reminded of the dystopian state of the world we live in, but it’s really only kept at bay at the back of your mind, until the art week frenzy and haze lifts and you realize it’s time to get back to Real Life. Art can only do so much before Reality sinks in.