Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce details of its presentation at the 2026 edition of Frieze Los Angeles. The gallery will present a focused selection of new works by Venezuelan-American artist Loriel Beltrán, whose practice is distinguished by sculptural accumulations of paint and color that challenge conventional definitions of painting. The presentation will be complemented by a selection of new and recent work by the gallery’s Los Angeles–based artists, including Todd Gray, Catherine Opie, Lari Pittman, Alex Prager, and Calida Rawles, alongside works by McArthur Binion, Arcmanoro Niles, and Kim Yun Shin.
Beltrán’s newest body of work will anchor the gallery’s booth. Merging painting and sculpture, his works are composed of layered accumulations of paint that, once dried, produce vibrant optical effects. Employing custom-made molds and layers of latex paint, each work is produced through a meticulous process of pouring, embedding, compressing, drying, slicing, and finally assembling each pigmented cross section into an abstract composition. Repeated over months, and in some cases years, this process underscores the works’ slow, labor-intensive physicality. Beltrán’s chromatic language also incorporates an element of chance in the interplay between material viscosity, gravity, and time. The resulting images are prismatic, as though color and light are emanating from every visual cut and break in the composition.
Drawing from the legacy of the Light and Space movement, Beltrán collapses distinctions between image and object, surface and substance, foregrounding the viewer’s real-time experience of color and volume. His sculptural formations activate the phenomenological experience of light, with color shifting in response to angle, proximity, and ambient conditions, encouraging sustained looking and heightened bodily awareness. Beltrán also identifies significant points of connection with a number of postwar artists, evoking Jack Whitten's material experimentations, Lynda Benglis's pours, Agnes Martin's organic grids, Mark Rothko’s exploration of color’s expressive potential, and Joseph Albers investigation of modern color theory. The works on view at Frieze Los Angeles underscore Beltrán’s distinct material language and his sustained engagement with time as a framework through which light, color, and medium are examined. Beltrán’s work is included in a number of notable private and public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL; and Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL, among others.
Additional highlights include new and recent works by several of the gallery’s Los Angeles–based artists, including Todd Gray, whose mural commission for LACMA will be unveiled this spring; Catherine Opie, whose solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, opens in March and marks her first major museum presentation in the United Kingdom; and Alex Prager, who will debut a new body of work at Lehmann Maupin New York this summer. The presentation will also feature several new paintings by McArthur Binion, known for his rigorously structured, minimalist works that merge abstraction with autobiography, ahead of a solo exhibition at Lehman Maupin New York opening in March.
Concurrent with the fair, Korean artist Do Ho Suh is prominently featured in the group exhibition Diary of Flowers: Artists and Their Worlds at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition brings together over 80 artworks from MOCA’s renowned collection, demonstrating how artists create their own worlds through their art–building networks, circles, and mythologies.
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