LA Art Show 2015 Recap

Justin Bower for Ace Gallery

LA Art Show’s 20th anniversary edition continues through this weekend, January 18th, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Not just a special anniversary, this year is also dedicated to expanding the fair’s Japanese gallery selection. These include Mizoe Art Gallery, Gallery Kitai, Niche Gallery, Kinoshu Kikau, Watanabe Fine Art and Tachibana Gallery, which offer fresh perspectives of New Contemporary art alongside their Western counterparts in Littletopia; Roq La Rue, Thinkspace, Spoke Art, La Luz de Jesus, Varnish Fine Art and more.

There is a recently noticeable boom of experimental styles in Asia. Works by Hiroshi Mori fuse modern Japanese pop culture, animation, and manga together with classical paintings of the West. Over at Watanabe Fine art, Akira Ohmori takes advantage of perception in his paintings of non-sensical rooms. Other strong players this year hail from Korea such as Keumsan Gallery, where you can find the dynamic red portraits of newcomer Koo Egene- which so happens to be located near Eugenio Merino’s sculpture of a carbon frozen Kim Jong-un. Sculpture proves one of the fair’s most popular mediums. Kaz’s hyper-realistic, larger than life busts of Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali for Copro Gallery are the go-to “selfie zone” for fair goers. For all of these and more that caught our eye, check out our exclusive photos below.

Fujibe Yasuyo for Keumsan Gallery