347 SUMMER 2024 BACKDROP EFFECT

BACKDROP EFFECT is the title of Flash Art International’s summer issue, which explores how artist practices can sometimes serve as serene places of healing, providing viewers with a sense of confidence. We look at how art can foster a restorative process that benefits both artist and audience, creating a symbiotic relationship of empowerment and personal growth.

“Drawing is like breathing,” says Judy Chicago, the subject of this issue’s first cover story. Chicago, wearing Dior, was photographed by Joshua Woods in her studio in Belen, New Mexico. In conversation with Pierce Eldridge, Chicago reveals that she began drawing before she started breathing, adopting a language in which the hand, heart, and mind are tightly interconnected. Her drawings — currently on display in the major retrospective “REVELATIONS” at Serpentine, London — function as empowerment tools, addressing themes such as birth, creation, and the role of women throughout history in the patriarchal art world.

The second cover story of the summer issue features Brook Hsu, who, wearing Kiko Kostadinov×Levi’s by Laura and Deanna Fanning, was photographed by Luis Corzo in her studio in Long Island City. Lost in her washed-green Wyoming landscapes, Hsu maintains a precise understanding of every shape, dune, and corner of her surroundings. As Margaret Kross writes, “The green that frequently bathes her fairytale forests, sobbing demons, and apparitional portraits is poem and material: leaking and seeping, with puke and toxins and nature and growth, green-eyed and green-screened, a soothing wavelength for the eye and the simulation realm in The Matrix.”

Bárbara Sánchez-Kane is the subject of this issue’s third cover story, which focuses on his participation in the 60th Venice Biennale, “Foreigners Everywhere,” with his work Prêt-à-Patria (2021). In the days leading up to the exhibition’s opening, Sánchez-Kane was photographed in Venice by Luca Grottoli wearing Kuboraum eyewear. In conversation with Michael Bullock, the artist discusses his radical ideas regarding power, gender, Catholicism, and nationalism, and how these concepts are embedded in clothing.

For the fourth cover story, Peter Shire was photographed by Jack Bool wearing JW Anderson in his studio, where he talked with Flash Art editor-in-chief Gea Politi during “just another bucolic afternoon in Echo Park, Los Angeles, with the cars making wooshing sounds as they go by.” Shire, embodying his own particular body language, spirit, and sense of humor, shares his ideas about pushing boundaries within his creative practice.

The final cover story presents Lu Yang (with Doku, his avatar) on the occasion of his solo show “DOKU The Flow” at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. The artist explains to Emily McDermott that “essentially, there are only two things in my life: spiritual practice and work,” reminding us that whether real or virtual, our bodies and minds are entwined.

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