Lucy Raven, an artist whose film installations explore cinema history and systems of power, has joined Lisson Gallery, making her one of the first artists included in this year’s Whitney Biennial to make the jump to an art-market juggernaut ahead of the show’s opening.
The gallery, which has locations in New York, London, and Shanghai, as well as a planned one for Los Angeles, will represent her globally.
“The gallery has a long history of showing video and film, and a long history of championing artists with practices that are more centered around installation and have a conceptual backbone,” Alex Logsdail, Lisson’s CEO, said in an interview. “So she’s a natural fit, in many ways.”
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Raven drew widespread acclaim last year for her film Ready Mix (2021), which was memorably presented at the Dia Art Foundation in New York. That film explored the production of concrete in Idaho by way of mesmerizing editing and a hypnotic soundtrack, and placed Raven in dialogue with Minimalist and Conceptualist works from decades past that similarly make prominent use of industrial materials.
Past works by Raven have focused on the extraction of copper ore in Nevada and the transport of the material to China, and the conversion of 2-D Hollywood films into 3-D.
This is the first time that Raven, who is based in New York, has ever been represented by a gallery. It is unusual for artists to have no representation prior to joining a blue-chip gallery of Lisson’s stature, but Logsdail said that this jump has “become a specialty” for Lisson, which has made a priority of taking on emerging and under-recognized artists.
Also on Lisson’s 67-person roster are artists such as Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, Garrett Bradley, Anish Kapoor, Lee Ufan, Sean Scully, and Lawrence Weiner.
Raven is one of the 63 artists participating in the Whitney Biennial, which is set to open in New York on April 6. Later that month, she will premiere a new film installation at the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels.