This issue of
Flash Art comes with a new brand identity, introducing a seasonal publication schedule starting from fall 2020. A new logo also heralds this change: an apparent return to the visual identity of
Flash Art, albeit revised and updated with an evolving graphic layout and doubled page count and contents to offer readers a more in-depth, discursive experience. This issue explores the dynamic hybridization of the languages of contemporary art, focusing on the theme of the
curatorial process—the exhibition as a moment of reflection and revelation with infinite potential for investigation.
Central role in this landscape, Germano Celant (1940–2020) to whom Terry Smith and Pascale Krief essays pay tribute defining how the visionary curator and critic upended the criteria for curating and exhibiting contemporary art. These pages analyze in depth practices of artists such Liliane Lijn—cover story of this issue—
Philippe Parreno's work which tirelessly tests the limits of the exhibition format; the oral practice of Ian Wilson, as well as the curatorial abuses, as Françoise Roche points out in regard to
Yona Friedman.
Also in this issue Barbara London's survey on
sound-based art practices; Matthew Linde's visual project on Masahiro Nakagawa's
20471120; a conversation with The Kitchen, New York on the concept of artist residency in relation to the current states of art production through projects by Autumn Knight and Baseera Khan;
Letter from the City's first chapter by Ivana Basic—a brand new column conceived as a correspondance embodying artists thoughts as an overlap between the internal and external world.
Reviews: "Don't Let This Be Easy" Walker Art Center, Minneapolis / Rose Wylie "where i am and was" Aspen Art Museum, Colorado / Toyin Ojih Odutola "A Countervailing Theory" Barbican Centre, London /
Robert Morris "
The Perceiving Body" MAMC+, Saint-Étienne Métropole / "Shifting Proximities" Nxt Museum, Amsterdam /
Irma Blank "Blank" CCA - Center for Contemporary Art and at the Bauhaus Foundation, Tel Aviv /
Martin Kippenberger "K" Fondazione Prada, Milan / "Untitled, 2020. Three perspectives on the art of the present" Punta della Dogana, Venice.
Flash Art is an international quarterly magazine and
publishing platform dedicated to thinking about contemporary art, exploring the evolving cultural landscape through the work of leading artists, writers, curators and others.
One of Europe's oldest art magazines,
Flash Art was founded in Rome in 1967, before relocating to Milan in 1971, and was originally bilingual, published in both Italian and English. In 1978 two separate editions were launched:
Flash Art International and
Flash Art Italia. Today the magazine remains one of the most recognizable and widely read publications of its kind, and is distributed in 87 countries.
