The Art World Returns to a Post-Fires Los Angeles

Kelly Akashi was one of LA 's most beloved artist's artists, with a fiercely devoted network of friends across age, medium, or gallery affiliation.

She feared for the worst, for her home, and her studio, which contained the bronze sculptures and glass installations for her first show with a new gallery.

Akashi returned to the house, which she moved into in 2021 after years of shuttling between different pads and studios.

After much debate, the fair was not canceled, despite the devastation.

Glassblower Akashi decided not to cancel her show, just push it back and fill the gallery space with a suite of works that emerged from an intense period of concentrated art-making in the last few weeks .

Akashi ’s always a fixture of the fair week .

On Monday night , Tower Bar was filled with New Yorkers hoping the same Tinseltown magic would endure in the after times.

By Tuesday morning the press corps had descended upon the arts district to the massive complex that is Hauser & Wirth , which was staging David Hammons’s Concerto in Black and Blue, which is a mostly empty dark gallery illuminated only by viewers’ tiny blue flashlights.