Assertions of LA’s unique market often accompany resistance to foreign entities: LA-based painter Lucy Bull says that the city’s distinctive qualities are 'better left unsaid', and Nemeroff calls LA’s art and its corresponding tightknit community 'a very well-kept secret'. The city’s spontaneous gatherings offer worthwhile evidence: Bull and friend Alexandra Metcalf hosted a wandering exhibition in the back of a Toyota Prius during Frieze Week 2022, an ad hoc curatorial space that united LA’s long dependence on cars with the city’s experimental, impish art history. It’s difficult, however, not to view the attitude of both locals and interlopers as a kind of scarcity marketing: come quick, they say, or you’ll miss the real, authentic LA – or, come quick, and you can get in on the ground floor of the next Manhattan.
