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The inaugural Los Angeles edition of the Paris-based FIAC fair has been pushed from March 2015 to sometime in 2016, its organizers announced. “In order to satisfy the requirement level of the galleries,” the fair organizers write, “FIAC has listened to the recommendations of its participants to modify the launch of its Los Angeles endeavor to provide both organizers and galleries sufficient time for optimal preparation.”
The L.A. edition was announced this past April and set for the Los Angeles Convention Center. With more and more art fairs cropping up over the years, it might be safe to assume that participation levels probably weren’t what they should be (especially since New York’s Armory Show and ADAA Art Show already kick off in March).
In our brief survey of Los Angeles galleries, contacts at David Kordansky gallery said they had planned to show at the fair, while Regen Projects did not.
“It’s a simple thing,” said Tim Blum, of powerhouse Blum & Poe, which has locations in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo, and had not planned to participate. “We’ve got four spaces to program and forty artists, or whatever, all over the world and art fairs in between. Unless you can do a great presentation every time it’s sort of meaningless to put pressure on artists to do more fairs.”
And, while he said he didn’t know the particulars of FIAC L.A., he thinks the city is not conducive to fairs anyway.
“I think it’s just really logistically complicated to schedule an art fair in L.A.,” he said. “It’s a vast city. What are they going to do, put it in a downtown convention center? Sounds awful to me. I wouldn’t want to go there as a visitor let alone as an exhibitor.”
In the statement announcing the postponement, Jean-Daniel Compain, senior vice president of Reed Expositions, which owns and organizes FIAC, and Aurelia Chabrillat, director of FIAC LA addressed this, saying, “The inaugural FIAC LA will be staged at the level of quality and preparation our exhibitors have come to expect. To this end, we have listened to the feedback of our constituencies: galleries, collectors and institutions in coming to this decision.”