Flash Art / 354

Flash Art International #354 - SPRING 2026 - Relevance

 

It’s understood that humans are visual creatures, navigating the world primarily through encountered images. Visual stimulus can function as a warning, as evidence, or as a trigger for some long-lost feeling of a bygone era. The spring issue of Flash Art, “Relevance,” explores such fleeting temporalities of representation. It begs the question: What does a memory, a TV show, or a feeling look like when it’s not viewed through the eyes but recreated through the hazy lens of retrospective remembering? The artists in this issue warp media through cheeky rearrangement and sly facsimile, speaking to the persistence of vision long after its affect has engaged the retina.

The issue begins in Luc Tuymans’s Antwerp studio. Photographed by means of Juergen Teller’s humble iPhone, Tuymans meets Daniel Merritt mid-cigarette and leads him into a conversation on American artists’ involvement in the CIA during the mid-twentieth century; the technical benefits of painting with a mirror; and the memories from which he conjures his paintings.

In Porto, at Fundação de Serralves, Anne Imhof stands at the edge of a sixty-foot-long steel swimming pool, part of her installation “Fun ist ein Stahlbad.” She’s captured by Tyler Mitchell, who, in conversation with the artist, revisits formative diving-board memories from childhood, discusses how such memories find their way into one’s practice, and considers the Kafka short story that inspired Imhof’s piece.

 

IN THIS ISSUE → 

 

Letter from the Editor ◯ Cover Story Shell Game. Luc Tuymans in Conversation with Daniel Merritt, photographed by Juergen Teller. ◯ Cover Story LIKE A DUET. Anne Imhof in Conversation with and photographed by Tyler Mitchell. ◯ Archive Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Bruce Nauman. ◯ Tetherings. Mary Stephenson in Conversation with Sonja Teszler, photographed by Benedict Brink. ◯ No Romance. Gili Tal by Anya Harrison ◯ Karmic Modernism. Elizabeth Englander in Conversation with Nick Irvin ◯ Margins as Method. A Visual Essay by Cairo Dipika Words by Eilidh Duffy ◯ Grapeshot. Nancy Lupo by Maya Tounta. ◯ Studio Scene Portrait of Matter. Kaare Ruud by Line Ulekleiv documented by Avventuroso ◯ The tiniest event can tear a hole. Sara MacKillop by Margaret Kross. ◯ Unpack / Reveal / Unleash These Ghosts. Clémentine Bruno by Michela Ceruti. ◯ Friend of X. Raque Ford in Conversation with Qingyuan Deng. ◯ Focus On Lisbon: The Waves by Joana Rafael and Justin Jaeckle. ◯ Role-Casting in the Uncanny Valley. Adam Gordon by Miles Huston. ◯ What Did Happen or What Might Have Happened or What Can Never Happen. Dustin Hodges by Nick Angelo. 

 

 

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Flash Art is an international quarterly magazine and publishing platform dedicated to contemporary art, exploring developments in the cultural landscape through the work of artists, writers, curators and various personalities from the art world. One of the oldest art magazines in Europe, Flash Art was founded in Rome in 1967 by the Italian art critic and publisher Giancarlo Politi, before moving to Milan in 1971. Originally published in Italian and English, the magazine was split into two publications in 1978 (Flash Art Italia and Flash Art International). Distributed worldwide, the magazine is one of the most widely read in its field and has become a benchmark in its field.