Inside The Other Art Fair’s Largest LA Edition Yet

Feature image: Audience exploring The Other Art Fair, courtesy of TOAF.

Presented by Saatchi Art, The Other Art Fair took place from February 26 to March 1, 2026, at 3Labs in Culver City as part of LA Art Week. Reaching its 15th edition in Los Angeles, the fair brought together nearly 160 independent artists, marking its largest local edition to date.

With a new venue and date, TOAF emphasizes direct interaction between artists and audiences, diverging from the traditional gallery–representation model. Transparent pricing and minimal intermediaries aim to create a more horizontal relationship between collectors and creators. The inclusion of many first–time exhibitors and a high proportion of local artists reinforces the fair’s mission to highlight new practices. Featuring painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, performance, and installation, the fair offers an experience akin to Red Dot/Spectrum during Miami Art Week.

The program structure focuses not only on exhibition but also on experience. Interactive projects, live performances, and public interventions strengthen the festival–like atmosphere. Compared to the previous year, the fair organized a more spacious opening/preview night and welcomed visitors with extended hours from day one.

Operating internationally since 2011 and hosting 11 annual fairs across the U.S. and U.K, including Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, London, and LA editions, the organization has provided visibility to thousands of artists throughout its history.

One of the standout works of this edition was French–Australian artist Linus Gruszewski’s inflatable installation Thank You. Built from 1,500 recycled polyethylene delivery bags, the geometric structure creates an immersive space that visitors can enter. Sunlight filtering through the semi–translucent surfaces generates a shimmering color field inside, transforming everyday waste into an intense, yet temporary, light experience. The work turns consumption byproducts into aesthetic and spatial compositions, making issues of sustainability and collective experience tangible.

Wonderlens Studio’s [02:16] The Art of the Ideal Deal reimagines the real estate world through the lens of timeless artworks. Two real estate agents are inserted into iconic masterpieces [from Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait to Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Morning, and David Hockney’s Big Splash], becoming protagonists of these cultural milestones. This concept highlights a simple yet effective truth: just as great artworks retain their value, these agents always secure the perfect deal. Sometimes emphasizing a property’s character, sometimes connecting clients to their dream homes, the project blurs centuries and styles with humor and insight.

Designer and marketing professional Nik Aliye [05:29] bases his work on optimism and joy. Each piece is created to calm both his mind and body while providing a similar sense of ease to viewers. Growing up in a diplomatic, immigrant family instilled a multicultural perspective, encouraging him to focus on shared experiences rather than differences. Aliye treats a world fragmented by conflict and pressure as an opportunity to hold onto humanity and hope, placing art’s healing power at the core of his practice and designing for joy, comfort, and reassurance.

The social dimension is also important to the fair. In collaboration with Altadena’s local nonprofit Brick by Brick, a donation–based table tennis event supported rebuilding efforts in areas affected by last year’s Los Angeles wildfires. In this way, the fair functions as a socially engaged space linked to its local context.

Jason Ward’s Uncanny Portraits [14:50] consciously subverts aesthetic expectations of portraiture. Self–aware poses, unsettling angles, awkward lenses, and tasteless accessories form the core of these uncanny images. The series transforms portraiture from an idealized representation to a fragile, artificial, and slightly grotesque surface.

While figures reference familiar archetypes, absurd interventions distort them. This strategy evokes dual responses in the viewer: familiarity and estrangement. At first glance ordinary, the compositions employ deliberate “errors” to create discomfort. Ward’s humor is incisive yet subtly unsettling, and the concept reframes portraiture as a visual simulation of societal role–play.

The Goodbye Line [16:27] is a community art project offering a space for people to share unspoken farewell messages. Participants can leave anonymous voicemail messages on a 24/7 phone line. While messages are occasionally shared in exhibitions or installations, privacy is maintained. The installation transforms personal reflections into collective action, fostering social intimacy by preserving memory and connection through the act of letting go.

LA–based artist Steven Rahbany [17:06] explores the intricate relationship between memory and human emotion through hand–stitched pillow works. Treating textile surfaces not merely as a medium but as a carrier of memory, each stitch leaves both physical and symbolic traces. His approach materializes memory’s fragile, layered, and often fragmented nature.

Rahbany’s works examine how personal memories shape individual identity and intersect with collective human narratives. The pillow, as an object associated with rest, dreams, and inner space, establishes an intimate connection with the viewer, offering a multi–sensory experience that is both visually and emotionally engaging while retaining decorative charm.

Galician photographer Xan Padron [18:16], widely recognized for his Time Lapse series launched in 2011, portrays cities through their inhabitants. Using a camera placed for two hours without drawing attention, Padrón captures the daily flow of people, highlighting everyday life. Each city provides a social and cultural portrait, including New York, London, Beijing, Sydney, Trinidad, Berlin, Paris, and Medellín.

Melbourne artist Luca Chiaravalle [21:20] creates miniature works exploring quiet spaces where scale, detail, and curiosity intersect with emotion. Initially a small narrative experiment, the practice evolved into a unique language encouraging viewers to slow down, approach, and rediscover aesthetic intensity in minutiae.

In the Miniature Gallery series, meticulously composed micro–scale exhibition spaces are set within transparent acrylic cubes. Spatial depth, wall textures, and artwork placement simulate a gallery in miniature, positioning viewers as both observers and imagined participants.

Amy Broch’s Joy Bomb [24:44] seeks to inject conscious counter–energy into the seriousness of daily life. While its motto, “Life is serious, we are not”, carries an ironic lightness, the deeper aim is to highlight joy as a fundamental element of mental and physical resilience.

The practice gained new meaning in 2018 when Broch’s husband Sean was diagnosed with ALS. Exploring treatments to slow disease progression, they discovered that happiness correlated with better outcomes and longevity. This informed Broch’s conceptual approach to creating playful, colorful spaces over years.

Though Joy Bomb embraces “Fun for Fun’s sake,” it transcends superficial amusement; the multi–sensory installations consciously encode joy into memory. Using humor and absurdity to resist dark conditions, the project turns happiness from an aesthetic choice into an existential strategy.

TOAF emerges as a threshold extending its mission through an artist–centered approach, experience–driven programming, and new spatial design. Of course, removing curators and galleries from the equation places the responsibility of choice on artists’ self–regulation and the practical viability of leased spaces. This inevitably leads to the use of pop visuals, vibrant colors, and mainstream sales–oriented imagery, as seen in other fairs. When an artist I met at a booth heard about my politically charged practice, they asked, "Why make work that isn’t aimed solely for sale?", prompting me to leave that area. If works aimed only at visual gratification, contemporary museum culture and biennials would not exist today.

Of the eight art fairs I visited this week, some events concluded faster than the 43 minutes I spent searching for parking at TOAF. Visitors lingering in the aisles, insufficient ventilation, and heat slightly reduced enjoyment. Yet the project managed to create a comfortable environment and a practical experience, allowing artworks to be taken home on the same day.

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