Nina Johnson at Felix LA.
Photo: Courtesy Nina Johnson
8 Emerging Artists That Made a Splash at Felix and Post-Fair in Los Angeles
These standout talents discovered at Felix LA and the inaugural Post-Fair should be on every art collector's acquisition list
Six weeks after the deadly wildfires ravaged Los Angeles, destroying homes and property, the city’s art community united to successfully mount the return of the Felix LA art fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the launch of the new Post-Fair at the Old Santa Monica Post Office.
The seventh edition of Felix LA, which took place February 19-23, showcased over 60 exhibitors from around the world in the poolside cabanas and tower suites of the historic hotel, while the inaugural Post-Fair, which ran February 20–22, featured 29 local, national, and international art galleries and project spaces in the landmarked building’s sprawling interior.
After surveying hundreds of artworks in various media, here are eight artists who should be on every alert art collector’s acquisition list.
Emily Rose Wright, Conversion Box, 2025. Photo: Courtesy Harkawik, New York and Los Angeles
1. Emily Rose Wright, presented by Harkawik at Felix LA
A Seattle-born artist based in Brooklyn, Emily Rose Wright studied painting through the lens of digital technology at Rhode Island School of Design, where she completed her BFA in 2022. Creating paintings of figures in garden settings, her canvases capture fading memories of women and children from times past, colorfully blurred like digital glitches yet reminiscent of the Impressionist paintings of the Nabis group of French artists—such as Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard—active in Paris at the end of the 19th century. Part of a group presentation of young women painters in Harkawik’s cabana suite at the fair, Wright had two figurative canvases that bordered on being abstract, including Conversion Box, which had been expressly plucked from her debut solo show, currently on view at the gallery’s Los Angeles space.
Pierre Bellot, Four, 2024. Photo: Courtesy 56 Henry, New York
2. Pierre Bellot, presented by 56 Henry at Felix LA
A painter of cats, landscapes, interiors, and abstractions, Pierre Bellot has exhibited in France since graduating from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2015. Following an artist residency at the Casa de Velazquez in Madrid in 2019-20, he had his first American solo show with 56 Henry in 2022, exhibiting watercolors of landscapes in a harmonious palette of yellows, greens, and grays, and returned in 2023 with a similarly colored yet more diverse selection of oil paintings. At the fair, the gallery presented a pair of eye-catching paintings of enigmatic cats and three abstract canvases of fireworks and patterns, with his 2024 painting Four exposing the quirky yet marvelous way he conceives, composes, and completes his thoughtfully layered and stirring subjects.
Sanglak Shon, Malbrouck, 2023. Photo: Courtesy Foundry Seoul, Seoul.
3. Sanglak Shon, presented by Foundry Seoul at Felix Art Fair
After graduating from London’s Royal College of Art with a Master’s degree in Fashion in 2016, Sanglak Shon established the design label KANGHYUK with his classmate Kanghyuk Choi and has remained in the spotlight ever since. Creating designs that combine conceptual and utilitarian elements, such as garments made from airbags and sound insulation materials in a minimalistic style, the brand was nominated for the LVMH Prize in 2019 and has collaborated with Reebok and Crocs. Since 2021, the duo has been individually making and exhibiting sculptures, with Sanglak Shon creating shiny, abstract animals from mass-produced steel hinges, screws, nuts, bolts, and springs. Assembled piece by piece in a labor-intensive process, the Seoul-based artist constructs baby sheep, alpacas, goats, hyenas, and monkeys, like 2023’s playful Malbrouck, which was exhibited in Foundry SEOUL’s 11th-floor room alongside his metal Porcupine 2.0 and notable works by other gallery artists.
Maya Fuji, Hanbunko, 2023. Photo: Yubo Dong. Courtesy Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles
4. Maya Fuji, presented by Charlie James Gallery at Felix LA
Born in Japan, Maya Fuji immigrated with her family to California at an early age. She traveled back and forth between Berkeley and her hometown, Kanazawa, before finally settling in San Francisco, where she currently lives and works. A self-taught artist, she was studying to get a Master’s in Business Administration when she decided she would rather become a painter. Regularly exhibiting in group exhibitions in the United States since 2020 and solos shows in the U.S. and Japan since 2022, she is currently making her one-person exhibition debut at the gallery’s L.A. space while also presenting a painting in its room at the fair. Exploring her identity as a mixed-race, first-generation immigrant who is still connected to her cultural heritage, Fuji paints domestic scenes that mix traditional Japanese mythology with manga and other pop references. Her painting Hanbunko, which translates as “halfsies” or “splitting evenly between two people,” illustrates her mixed identity in a fascinatingly direct and psychological way.
Tara Walters, Blue (For Jack Bendes), 2025. Photo: Courtesy Nina Johnson, Miami
5. Tara Walters, presented by Nina Johnson at Felix LA
Tara Walters envisions the scenes she paints, starting by tuning into something outside the realm of the conscious mind and reaching a deep state where intellect and imagination meet. Working with fire to make smoke paintings while studying at Savannah College of Art and Design, she switched to using ocean water to give her more spiritual paintings a special sparkle after earning an MFA from Art Center College of Design in 2020. Painting such uplifting elements of nature as flowers, trees, animals, sunrises, mountains, and rainbows with a vibrant palette of soft, layered colors, Walters douses the canvases in her Los Angeles studio with Pacific Ocean water gathered near her Malibu Village home, which she and her musician husband recently lost in the devastating fires. Tapping into spiritual concerns, her painting Blue (For Jack Bendes)—one of three new canvases Nina Johnson brought to her cabana space—memorializes the passing of a legendary surfer while depicting the renewal of life with a sense of optimism.
Angela Anh Nguyen, Counter Culture among other things..., 2023. Photo: Courtesy Harlesden High Street, London
6. Angela Anh Nguyen, presented by Harlesden High Street at Post-Fair
Working in a restaurant before being laid off when the pandemic hit, Angela Anh Nguyen watched YouTube videos and went through a lot of trial and error to learn how to tuft her artistic rugs. Breaking the rules of traditional rugmaking, the DIY artist designs her lively wool works by layering and collaging imagery and sketching in typography before projecting, tracing, and detailing her subjects on canvas and finally fabricating them with a tufting gun. Exhibiting in group shows at galleries since 2022, she’s garnered critical acclaim and an artist’s residency along the way. Influenced by politics from her Vietnamese father and heavy metal music from her partner’s passion for it, her rugs convey working-class sentiments with a hardcore point of view. Having her first solo outing at Harlesden High Street Post-Fair booth, Nguyen displayed her irreverent rugs on the walls and floor, with her playfully tufted Counter Culture, among other things… being a good way to describe all of her imaginatively crafted works.
Harry Gould Harvey IV, 777 E’Art’hly Dimensions (Burnt Offering), 2025. Photo: © Harry Gould Harvey IV. Photo: Ian Edquist. Courtesy the artist and P·P·O·W, New York
7. Harry Gould Harvey IV, presented by P·P·O·W at Post-Fair
A self-taught artist who claims to have dropped out of high school after being in special education classes most of the time, Harry Gould Harvey IV got his first big break with a 2021 solo show at Bureau gallery on New York’s Lower East Side. Reviewed in Art in America, the critic described his work as “devotional but also a little diabolical.” A maker of mystical diagrammatic drawings displayed in hand-built frames and Gothic sculptures incorporating found objects, he is also the co-founder of the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, a creative startup connecting the global contemporary art world to the working-class community of Fall River, Massachusetts, where Harvey was born and still lives. Following a one-person exhibition at P·P·O·W in 2023, the gallery presented a solo booth at the fair of esoteric drawings, including 777 E’Art’hly Dimensions (Burnt Offering), a clever symmetrical piece celebrating the seven manners of holy love.
Yutaka Nozawa, Canvas Canvas #35 2025. Photo: Courtesy Kayokoyuki, Tokyo
8. Yutaka Nozawa, presented by Kayokoyuki at Post-Fair
Born in Shizuoka, Japan, and educated in Tokyo, Yutaka Nozawa has exhibited his art in his homeland for several years. Yet, his engaging work has just started to emerge on the international art scene. With Master’s degrees in painting and photography, the artist has found a fascinating way to put the two mediums in dialogue in his most recent artworks. For his new series Canvas Canvas, on view in a November solo show at Kayokoyuki in Tokyo and filling the gallery’s Post-Fair booth, Nozawa created diptychs consisting of a photograph and a nearly identical painting. Beginning by placing a bare white canvas in a select setting, Nozawa paints the scene, replaces the blank canvas with the one just painted, and then photographs it in the same setting. Printing the color photograph the same size as the painting and presenting them side-by-side, he constructs a surreal scenario that conceptually crisscrosses time and space.
Cover: Nina Johnson at Felix LA.
Photo: Courtesy Nina Johnson
More from Galerie
