Ready Mix

The Neue Nationalgalerie is showing Lucy Raven’s video installation Ready Mix (2021), which deals with the themes of work, technology, and the hidden mechanisms of power. From this sprawling installation in the upper hall of the museum, visitors will have a direct line of sight to the construction pit of the “berlin modern” building, and the work makes direct visual and thematic references to the monumental construction site of the new museum next door. The opening of the exhibition coincides with the laying of the foundation stone of the building, which is designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

Lucy Raven made her immersive film installation Ready Mix, 2021, on location at aconcrete and gravel plant in Bellevue, Idaho. The work explores properties of force, pressure and materiality (both geological and synthetic) within the context of the Western United States. Born in Arizona in 1977, Raven frequently engages with the complex history of the region’s formation and depiction, as well as its contemporary role in global trade, communication and development.

The Neue Nationalgalerie invited Lucy Raven to exhibit Ready Mix on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of the berlin modern, which is under construction next door. Presented in the upper hall of the Mies van der Rohe building, the film allows us to appreciate the complicated legacies of Modernism, with its developed urban spaces, and celebration of built forms that incorporated raw materials like concrete. Further, it raises questions of durability, sustainability, and the autonomy of architecture as a modern form of visual culture and function.

Lucy Raven (born 1977) is originally from Tucson, Arizona. She lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 2000, and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 2008. Her work has been exhibited by institutions around the world, including Wiels, Brussels, Belgium (2022); Dia Chelsea, New York, USA (2021); Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2016–17); Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, USA (2016); Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2014); and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2012).

Her work has also been presented in numerous group exhibitions including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2022 & 2013); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2018–19); 2016 Montreal Biennial; and the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2018). With Vic Brooks and Evan Calder Williams, she is a founding member of 13BC, a moving-image research and production collective. Raven teaches at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York.

Lucy Raven: Ready Mix (2021)

Black-and-white video, quadraphonic sound, aluminum and plywood screen, and aluminum seating structure

45 minutes

Director and editor: Lucy Raven

Composer: Deantoni Parks

Aerial photography: Yancy Caldwell

Principal photography and location sound recording: Spencer Cordovano/F11

Consulting editor: Mike Olenick

Grip: Banwer Rigging and Grip

Re-recording mixer: Dave Paterson

Sound Post: HARBOR

Color correction/online edit: Ryan Jenkins

Screen engineering and fabrication: MEER Precision and South Side Design & Building

Video and lighting consultant: Glen Fogel

Curatorial Team:

Ready Mix was commissioned by Dia Art Foundation and curated by Alexis Lowry with Randy Gibson, Manager of Exhibition Technology. The presentation at the Neue Nationalgalerie is curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Lisa Botti, in collaboration with Randy Gibson and Dia Art Foundation.

Lucy Raven | Ready Mix

February 10 - April 21 2024

Neue Nationalgalerie

Credits:

Artworks © Lucy Raven

Installation views: Ready Mix, installation view Neue Nationalgalerie, 10.2.-21.4.2024 © Courtesy die Künstlerin und Lisson Gallery / Dia Art Foundation / Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David von Becker