Felix Art Fair: An Intimate Art Experience at the Roosevelt Hotel

As an added bonus during LA Art Week, the Felix Art Fair at the iconic Roosevelt Hotel offered a refreshing change of pace from the larger, more commercial fairs that dominate the city's art calendar. Self-described by one fair-goer as an event for "LA art insiders," Felix has cultivated a unique approach that transforms the hotel's rooms and suites into intimate gallery spaces, creating an experience that feels more like visiting a collector's home than navigating a traditional art fair.

"Success for us isn't about getting bigger," explains co-founder Mills Morán. "It's about creating the conditions for meaningful encounters with art and fostering the relationships that sustain our community."

This philosophy was evident throughout the fair, where the emphasis on quality over quantity and atmosphere over spectacle created opportunities for deeper engagement with the works on display. The charming setup, with galleries occupying individual hotel rooms, encourages a more personal interaction between visitors, gallerists, and the art itself.

El Apartamento Gallery: Exploring Cuban Identity

Among the standout exhibitors was El Apartamento Gallery from Havana, Cuba and Madrid, which presented powerful works by Roberto Diago. His art examines the condition of Afro-Cubans within the social territory of the Revolution, offering a cultural and sociological perspective that grapples with the lasting effects of colonial processes.

Christian Gundin, the gallery's owner, explains, "For Diago, he always questions the footprints of colonialism on black contemporary man and their insertion in modern society. He uses a woven canvas technique and certain squares of the weaving are painted black to represent the footprints of his ancestors."

Diago's work stands as a form of cultural resistance, speaking from what Gundin describes as "a self-conscious and maroon otherness that claims other religious belongings, other canons of beauty, and other gazes on the white world that inhabits the West." As one of Cuba's most influential artists, Diago's impact is both far-reaching and enduring, with his work featured in numerous institutions across the United States and Europe.

Coma Gallery: Aboriginal Art Traditions

Another highlight came from Coma Gallery of Australia, making their Felix Art Fair debut with impressive works by emerging artist Puuni Brown Nungarrayi of the Luritja language group. Nungarrayi's art represents a continuation and reinvention of her mother Isobel Gorey's Kapi Tjukurrpa (Water Dreaming) tradition, while establishing a distinct visual language of her own.

"The beautiful circles, of which there are three in each painting," explains Chloe Morrissey of Coma Gallery, "are references to three sacred sites where she has been told about bodies of knowledge from her ancestors."

These circular forms, recurring motifs in Papunya painting, represent different water sources – billabongs, watering holes, streams, or rivers – and convey essential knowledge about finding, replenishing, and sustaining these vital resources in the desert environment. Beyond their practical significance, the concentric circles allude to an all-encompassing life cycle.

"It's a beautiful story of the passing down of language, tradition and culture and the idea of sustaining culture through painting," Morrissey adds, highlighting how Nungarrayi's work contributes to one of the most significant art movements in Australian history.

Patel Brown Gallery: Whimsical Collaborations

The Canadian Patel Brown Gallery brought the collaborative works of Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, founding members of The Royal Art Lodge who have continued working together since the collective disbanded in 2008. Their playful, text-based works combine ethereal imagery with witty, poetic text, creating pieces that balance whimsy and profundity.

The duo's collaborative process typically involves Dumontier creating the initial painting – in many cases, a series of ethereal clouds – before Farber adds text elements. This back-and-forth approach has roots in The Royal Art Lodge's practice, where members would meet weekly to make art together while listening to records and sharing drinks.

Owner Gareth Brown-Jowett observes, "We notice for a lot of people it brings out emotion. It makes people happy, it makes them laugh, it makes them smile and they rarely get bored. A lot of times when people acquire Michael and Neil's work they tend to acquire again and again."

This emotional resonance explains why Dumontier and Farber's work has found homes in prestigious collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Winnipeg Art Gallery, as well as private collections like that of artist Takashi Murakami.

LA Beast Gallery: Mystical Visions

Representing the local Los Angeles scene, LA Beast Gallery showcased the intricate works on paper by Chyrum Lambert. The Highland Park-based gallery, though relatively young at just three years old, has quickly established itself by focusing on artists whose work engages with mysticism, anthropology, and what Zack Christensen, Founder and Director of the gallery, described as "the curious behind the veil."

Lambert's colorful, contrast-rich compositions exist in an intriguing ambiguous space. "He kind of keeps it very ambiguous," Christensen explained. "Is it flora? Is it fauna? Is it gemology? In a way, it's just kind of like this manifestation."

The methodical nature of Lambert's process involves carefully shifting materials around until he finds "that perfect kind of flow" before anchoring everything in place. His background as a poet informs what the gallery calls his "weird visual poetry," creating work that plays with microscopic and macroscopic perspectives to disorienting yet captivating effect.

The gallery's relationship with Lambert exemplifies the community-building aspect of Felix Art Fair. "We reached out to him just before we were a gallery and got to know him, and it became like a really copacetic arrangement," noted Christensen. "We are now really good friends... that's the hope when you start something like this—that you not only have this relationship, but it's really nice to actually have friendships spark out of working together."

A Different Kind of Art Fair

What makes Felix distinct in the crowded landscape of art fairs is its commitment to intimacy and authenticity. By limiting its scale and choosing a venue that encourages lingering and conversation, the fair creates conditions for the kind of meaningful encounters with art that often prove elusive in larger, more commercially driven settings.

The hotel room format forces galleries to be more selective and intentional with their presentations, resulting in tightly curated offerings that effectively communicate each gallery's vision. This approach seems particularly well-suited to Los Angeles, a city whose art scene has always valued the personal and the idiosyncratic alongside the institutional and the blue-chip.

As art fairs continue to proliferate globally, Felix stands as a reminder that sometimes the most impactful art experiences come through intimacy rather than scale, through depth rather than breadth. In transforming the Roosevelt Hotel into a temporary community of art lovers and makers, Felix has created something increasingly rare in today's art world: an event that feels genuinely personal.