Flash Art, Issue 348 (Fall 2024): De-Object

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Flash Art is an international bimonthly magazine dedicated to contemporary art, exploring the evolving cultural landscape through the work of leading artists, writers, curators and others.

In this issue:

“DE-OBJECT,” Flash Art’s fall issue, focuses on artists who explore acts of recomposition and decomposition, the undoing of objects and their constituent parts, whether organic, kinetic, ephemeral, gustatory, olfactory, or simply in a state of flux that lends itself to a thematic designation.

In this issue Louisa Elderton writes about Mire Lee’s work: “Her abstract installations often evoke the body in its amalgam of form and material: corporeal masses gaping or pierced, leaking or writhing, barely holding themselves together.” On the occasion of her Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, from October 8, 2024, to March 3, 2025, Lee is the subject of the first cover story of this issue. She was photographed in her Berlin home by Hyesoo Chung, wearing outfits by Hyein Seo.

A number of artists seem to be grappling with similar approaches to physically mutable yet ultimetly eternal forms. Anicka Yi’s desire to continue making art from beyond the grave is investigated by Dean Kissick in this issue, while Rirkrit Tiravanija discusses with Hans Ulrich Obrist the idea of activating art collectively. The two long-time friends discuss a redistribution of value, particularly in reference to Tiravanija’s retrospective “A LOT OF PEOPLE” at LUMA Arles, organized in collaboration with New York’s MoMA PS1.

Sara Cwynar was invited to create a special self-portrait for the second cover story of the issue, which also includes a collage of stills from her new video work Baby Blue Benzo (2024), set to be showcased in her solo exhibition of the same name at 52 Walker, New York, from October 4 to December 21, 2024. Author Elijah Jackson posits how Cwynar’s “preoccupations and vocabulary of the image maneuver between discipline, place, and degree of physicality, unsettling any concept of the real.”

The third cover story is dedicated to Sandra Mujinga, whose solo exhibition Time as a Shield will be on view at Kunsthalle Basel until November 10, 2024. Mujinga, wearing Kuboraum & Innerraum glasses, was photographed by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. in her studio at ISCP, New York. Bernardo José de Souza beautifully describes her chimeric, ghostly, elongated otherworldly beings, pondering whether they are “warriors, robots of sorts, rebels, or mercenaries. Are they humans in disguise, or is disguise a humanoid feature? Are they there to look after us humans, or, conversely, to defeat humankind?”

Also in this issue: Sylvie Hayes-Wallace, in conversation with Margaret Kross, discusses her cages and grids, which are containers for everything and nothing; Natasha Hoare considers the practice of Norwegian-Nigerian artist Frida Orupabo, known for her unapologetically confrontational digital creations that often explore the sexualization and objectification of Black bodies; Amy Jones delves into Marina Xenofontos’s multifaceted practice and how it shifts and reverberates like an echo; Mariana Lemos acutely elaborates on Eva Fàbregas’s oozing, pastel-hued creations, which will be featured in Manifesta 15 in Barcelona; Elizabeth Jaeger, in conversation with Estelle Hoy, gives a detailed and humorous view of her creative process, starting with rare encounter with a pelican; and Caroline Elbaor looks into Jack O’Brien’s practice, which pivots around the production of queer desire and consumption under later capitalism.

This fall’s installment of Unpack / Reveal / Unleash features Alex Bennett’s in-depth look at the painting practice of emerging Czech talent Stanislava Kovalčíková. The Critic Dispatch projects a utopian view of a new (art) world by Collecteurs. Starting with this issue, our city focus has a new look, concentrating on the architecture of museums and their impact on urban planning and the inhabitants of big cities. This issue’s Focus On is dedicated to Paris, in which Octave Perrault provides an incisive critical analysis of the architectural choices of certain art institutions. The Curist enters the special world of Very Public in Riyadh with Alaa Tarabzouni and Fahad Bin Naif in conversation with Oliver Farrell. Letter from the City is penned from Warsaw by Lou Cantor.

Reviews 
Steve McQueen Bass Dia:Beacon, New York by Valerie Werder / Donald Rodney Visceral Canker Spike Island, Bristol by Frank Wasser / Marianna Simnett WINNER Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin by Philipp Hindahl / Katharina Grosse Shifting the Stars Centre Pompidou-Metz by Margot Nguyen; Jana Euler Oilopa WIELS, Brussels by Pierre-Yves Desaive / Arcadia Bally Foundation, Lugano by Michela Ceruti / Dana Schutz The Island The George Economou Collection, Athens by Nicolas Vamvouklis.

*Image above: Cover: Mire Lee in her home in Berlin, wearing Hyein Seo, photographed by Hyesoo Chung, June 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Flash Art; Sara Cwynar, self-portrait, July 2024. Commissioned by Flash Art. Courtesy of the artist and Flash Art; Sandra Mujinga in her studio at ISCP, New York, photographed by Elliot Jerome Brown Jr., June 2024. Eyewear by Kuboraum & Innerraum. Courtesy of the artist and Flash Art.