LOS ANGELES—In celebration of Frieze Week, La Loma is thrilled to present Almost Famous, a group exhibition of contemporary works hosted by Vielmetter Los Angeles at their Lanai Gallery and open Saturday, February 21 through March 21, 2026. Artists include Merrick Adams, Alex Becerra, Akea Brionne, Gerald Davis, Olivia Hill, Skylar Hughes, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Preslav Kostov, Raina Lee, Jasmine Little, Nick Modrzewski, Dave Muller, Nabilah Nordin, Cindy Phenix, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Nevena Prijić, Tariku Shiferaw, and Tyler Vlahovich. The opening reception on Saturday, Feb 21, cohosted by Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, will also celebrate the magazine’s 43rd issue.

Art Star. The phrase was always a little more robust than “Rock Star” or “Movie Star.” The other two were tawdry cliches, Behind the Musics and Sunset Boulevards waiting to happen. Here in the 21st century, where the terms of the grand Warholian have been reversed—many of us might dream now of fifteen minutes of obscurity, of being free even for that long from the social media panopticon—the whole notion of ‘stardom’ has come to seem a little fishy. Is it really desirable—to say nothing of attainable—in our present situation? The dream of it, of course, persists here even now—for as long as Los Angeles exists, one imagines, people will flock to it in search of fame—but it’s impossible to embrace anymore with the 20th century’s wholehearted loucheness.

This may be why so many of the works on display here bend somehow away from fame, as with the evocation of Karen Carpenter (she who sang “Superstar,” let’s not forget) in absentia in Dave Mueller’s Empty Drum Kit #4 or with the figure in Akea Brionne’s thrilling Dance to Remember, whose kinetic exuberance is offset with a distinct and ineradicable sense of privacy. The artists in this installation may be as varied as it comes—witness the welded steel figures of Nabilah Nordin’s contributions, part surreal/part Ballardian nightmare, or Tariku Shiferaw’s series of works that borrow their titles from the music of the African diaspora, for further proof—but all of them share a richness and depth of intelligence and imagination that puts the lie to the idea that stardom is the province of shallow people too.

“Once I had a dream of fame,” the novelist David Markson wrote. “Generally, even then, I was lonely.” Aren’t we all, and yet to see these artists in communion with one another, and with us, looking, that loneliness may loosen a little, giving way to what so many of these paintings propose too: an intimacy.

-Matthew Specktor