Secret exhibition 3: FLASH ART N.134 MAY 1987

“I don’t have anything against Flash Art. I just don’t read it. Art magazines have never been very good. It’s a big generalization, but at this point, I’m willing to make it. I think that art magazines are next to being irrelevant to the work that’s being done.” This is how Donald Judd began the interview that Paul Taylor conducted with him for Flash Art issue no. 134, from May 1987.

This exhibition takes the very same issue of Flash Art as a sort of time capsule—a container that includes many artists. History is written in many forms, and the observation of a past document can be a way to read a context, a moment, a time, but also an ecosystem. To be limited to a single source of information may result in only a fragment of what was artistically happening at that time. Yet, it is a fragment strong enough to be included in a leading magazine.

The specific issue of Flash Art as the starting point for this exhibition is entirely arbitrary. We don’t see it as more significant than others. We are not revisiting its content from any particular angle, but we want to “see” what kind of art practices and artists were featured in May 1987 in the so-called “Leading European Art Magazine.” How “European” is the constellation of names that we see in this magazine? Is it possible to talk about “European art” today? What remains after many years since its publication? What can still be found online from that time? And what about the same artists mentioned in the magazine—what is available online about them today? Are there artists who have been completely forgotten?

We asked Mieke Van Der Boogart (while she was doing her internship at Index) to locate images of works from ALL the artists mentioned in the magazine. This includes all the names appearing in articles, ads, reviews, and interviews—every one of them. Mieke has selected, when possible, images from 1984, images from today, and ghost images from other moments. This process could result in a massive exhibition, filling room after room of a large museum. What kind of exhibition would this be? What kind of history lesson would it offer? What kind of aesthetic, political, and sociological readings could be drawn from it?

In the same interview with Donald Judd in Flash Art issue no. 134 (May 1987), the American minimalist sculptor says: “Art magazines don’t even report what’s happening. They aren’t generally even correct factually.”

This exhibition was presented at Index during CALL IT MUSEUM as part of a program of secret exhibitions. Some visitors found these exhibitions, located in a secret space created specially to define other exhibitional temporalities and ways to understand curatorial and institutional practice.