Lucy Raven’s ‘Ready Mix’

Lucy Raven’s exhibition of newly commissioned work by Dia Chelsea is open until December 30, 2021, and is definitely worth the visit. The show presents two new pieces by the artist: Casters X-2 + Casters X-3 (2021), an installation of kinetic light sculptures that belongs to Raven’s ongoing Casters series which she began in 2016, and Ready Mix (2021).

Ready Mix, the forty-five minutes long–continually looping projection on a massive, industrial-grade scaffold of a screen–overwhelms the viewer with the perfectly ideal, minimalistic images of still and feverish frames. The film will captivate you, from its beginning of the violent rupture of life-revealing earth by the relentless machinery, to the silent climax of an addictively appealing uniformity of the wall constructed out of interlocking blocks of the inanimate cement, with an insignificant human presence.

A more detailed review by Andrzej Jachimczyk of Ready Mix will appear in the Spring 2022 issue of Millennium Film Journal 75.

Visit Dia Chelsea’s website for more information on the exhibition.

Photo Caption: Lucy Raven, Ready Mix, 2021. Installation View, Dia Chelsea, New York. ©Lucy Raven. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York

Text by Andrzej Jachimczyk