Sunlight, Space, and Stillness: A Day in Los Angeles Galleries

8/16/2025

Hector Chen

This is my first time back in Los Angeles in over a dozen years, and I gave myself one rule: visit as many galleries as I could in a single day, even if it meant driving in loops across the city. I ended up visiting more than a dozen galleries, from Highland Avenue to West Hollywood to downtown. Four spaces rose to the top—Sean Kelly, Hauser & Wirth in West Hollywood, and Make Room Gallery,—each for entirely different reasons. Although my favourite piece of the day comes from an unexpected stop at James Fuentes.

At Sean Kelly, the group show Ground Work set the tone—thoughtfully curated, neither rushed nor overly grand, the kind of exhibition that rewards lingering. Summer in LA seems to suit group shows; the season’s natural downtime becomes a space for play, conversation, and unexpected pairings.

Installation View at Sean Kelly LA

Hauser & Wirth’s West Hollywood location is anchored by Christina Kimeze: Long Loops, and walking into the room felt like stepping into a slowed-down current. The canvases are ethereal yet grounded—fields of color that ripple between atmosphere and form, as if they’ve been breathing quietly in the corner all along. Kimeze’s surfaces have a tactile softness that draws you closer, the kind of work that doesn’t insist on being understood all at once. Maybe it’s the late-summer haze or the fact that I’ve been away from LA so long, but I lingered here more than anywhere else. The show runs through October 4, 2025, and feels like an antidote to the big, loud moments elsewhere—a space where time bends just for you.

Installation View at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood

Make Room embraced the same seasonal looseness with Into the Woods, a group exhibition that leans into a dreamlike, slightly surreal sensibility. It’s the sort of show that feels just as comfortable in LA’s open-plan architecture as it would in a more tightly edited New York space, but here the works have literal breathing room.

And then, at James Fuentes, a small work from Becca Mann’s botanical series stopped me cold. Mann’s paintings compress time in a way that feels almost archaeological—dense, meticulous renderings where every leaf and petal seems to carry the memory of its own making. In a city where so much art revels in scale, finding something so intimate—and so precise—was a quiet reminder that the smallest works can hold the longest conversations.

Maker Room has an early Kusama on view, together with half a dozen other artists they represent.

Takeaway: LA vs NYC - What are the differences?

Having worked in New York for the last few years, I can’t help but compare my LA gallery hopping experience today against the rhythms of the city I know best. Here are three major differences:

1. Market Positioning and Artistic Identity
New York remains the epicenter of the U.S. art market, home to blue-chip galleries, major auction houses, and marquee fairs like the Armory Show, Independent, and TEFAF New York. Artists often see representation there as a career milestone; the market’s gravitational pull shapes the tone of exhibitions, which tend to align closely with established art historical narratives and the expectations of collectors, critics, and curators.

Los Angeles, by contrast, is riding a wave of growth—its collector base fueled by tech wealth, Hollywood creatives, and high-net-worth transplants. International attention is on the rise, thanks to Frieze LA, Felix, and a steady influx of New York galleries opening West Coast branches. The result is a looser, more experimental ethos, with cross-disciplinary influences from film, design, and performance art. Walking through this summer’s group shows, I noticed not only a more relaxed curatorial voice but also a notably diverse mix of artists—including a strong presence of Asian artists—presented without the market-driven framing that often dominates New York.

Becca Mann’s botanical series at James Fuentes—small in scale, vast in memory.

2. Geography and Accessibility
In LA, galleries are scattered across neighborhoods—Culver City, DTLA, Hollywood—and visiting them demands intentional planning. Today I spent close to three hours just driving, which didn’t bother me; as a curious visitor, the act of moving between spaces became part of the day. But I can see how, for many, the sheer distance could be a deterrent. In New York, by contrast, galleries exist in dense clusters—Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Tribeca—where you can cover a dozen shows in an afternoon without ever looking for parking. The pace there is faster, the encounters more spontaneous, and the city’s physical compression pushes you into art without asking much in return.

3. Scale and Architecture
In LA, gallery spaces tend to be larger and more willing to experiment with architecture—converted warehouses, stand-alone buildings, places that invite you to step into a mood as much as a show. Even when the work itself is modest, it’s placed with breathing room, spaced further apart than in New York. And almost every gallery I visited, no matter how small, had parking—an amenity that in New York would feel as fantastical as a rooftop sculpture garden.

Final thoughts:

LA is a city of distances, but today those miles stitched themselves into a narrative: one of expansiveness, curiosity, and unexpected stillness—an experience that, for all its contrasts with New York, feels just as much at the centre of the art world as anywhere else.

That said, I couldn’t ignore what I heard in conversation. I spoke with several staff members, and more than one admitted that business hasn’t been great lately. The galleries I visited were rarely crowded; in some cases, I was the only visitor in the room. The reasons for this are layered and worth unpacking—but that’s a story for another day. Until then, enjoy this last bit of summer.