Ruinart toasts to its year-long artist collaboration program with a Frieze LA dinner celebrating Andrea Bowers and her dedication to environmental justice.
Santa Monica’s ocean mist rolls in and infuses the air with a wet, salty haze as guests arrive at Maison Ruinart’s intimate dinner at 1 Pico at Shutters on the Beach following the buzzy first day of Frieze Los Angeles. A long, candlelit table overlooks the ocean, adorned with ferns and ivy and other foliage that recalls a forest floor. A steady murmur of chatter fills the room as glasses of Ruinart, the oldest established Champagne house, materialize in sets of threes at our seats.
Hannah Traore arrives straight from her eponymous gallery’s booth (F-10) at the fair, smelling like jasmine and decked out in chunky gold rings. This year, the young gallerist is showing sculptures and earth-tinged silk canvases by James Perkins (who, in a full-circle moment, Traore tells me, is the first artist she represented when she opened the gallery a little over two years ago). Across from us sits Kim Shui in a strappy, asymmetrical olive green and floral swirl dress from her Fall/ Winter 2024 collection, paired with shiny light pink tights, a wine-red snakeskin jacket, and white platform heels. Elsewhere, seats fill up with a members of the Ruinart team, including President and CEO Frederic Dufour, as well as creatives such as designers Laura Kim and Bonnie Young, artists Amanda Wall and Gaia Matisse, jewelry designer Mary Anderson, and Yvonne Force Villareal of the Art Production Fund.
The occasion: a culinary celebration to kick-off this year’s Carte Blanche program, Conversations with Nature, at Frieze, which begins with newly commissioned works by Los Angeles-based artist and activist Andrea Bowers. The year-long project highlights also includes five other artists from five continents whose works are in dialogue with nature: Marcus Coates, Thijs Biersteker, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Henrique Oliveira, Tomoko Sauvage.
In a black blazer and trousers with a white button down and softly textured light brown hair, Bowers rises with a smile to make a toast. “Activists can like champagne, too,” she laughs.
Known for working on the frontline, the artist has tree-sat to protest deforestation, advocated for undocumented families, joined the BLM protests, and created a site-specific installation to honor the legacy of Gay rights activist Harvey Milk. Her current exhibition “Exist, Flourish and Evolve”—on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio until May 26—includes a documentary film that investigates the toll factory farming has taken on Lake Erie’s ecosystem in a pointed argument that nature should have rights. For her special Ruinart collaboration, she created a suspended sculpture, titled Chandeliers of Interconnectedness, made from steel tree branches and neon leaves and recycled glass for the Ruinart lounge, underscoring the champagne house's commitment to sustainability.
At 1 Pico, green, blue, and yellow ribbons emblazoned with environmental slogans (mine reads “there is only one Earth”), leftover from an immersive installation also created by Bowers for the fair are folded at each guest’s seat. A few minutes in and some have fashioned them into headbands, scarves, and sashes. Ruinart’s Food for Art program is in full swing. Artful courses are punctuated by short-but-sweet speeches, including one by chef Rob Rubba of Washington D.C.'s Michelin-starred, plant-based restaurant Oyster Oyster. The 2023 James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef of the Year reflects on his earlier farmers market excursion where he found seasonal California delicacies not yet available on the East Coast. Citrus, avocado, strawberries, local mustard flowers, and raw Tomales Bay oysters, paired with Ruinart Blanc Singulier.
The aforementioned avocados find their way stuffed into finely sliced, slightly pickled kohlrabi nestled in a deliciously creamy, cool peanut broth dotted with sweet peas. Another highlight: the pistachio tarte is melt-in-your-mouth and not too sweet, with strawberries and a subtle basil granite, pairs perfectly with the effervescent Ruinart rosé. As dinner comes to an end and the fog thickens, guests linger around final glasses of champagne and slowly trickle out to the open courtyard and into the night where Frieze afterparties await. As I take one last look at the tablescape, I overhear someone asking when the next Ruinart gathering will be.