Ragen Moss

What Is a Deprivation? is an exhibition by Ragen Moss consisting of twelve sculptures, each suspended from a single point in the ceiling. Moss developed and has been refining her method of making over the last twenty years. Alongside Moss’s more recognizable transparent forms with painterly marks, six new works are introduced for the first time: “Lumens”.

The Lumens are Moss's new fire-based sculptures. They evoke her long-standing investment in luminosity and her commitment to addressing sculpture’s center. Linguistically, a lumen is both a scientific measure of luminous flux as well as the central cavity of a hollow organic structure. The Lumens involve the artist’s decision to use fire, combustion and energy as her new sculptural medium. They lend a quality of core intensity, warmth and spirithood to the work. As the artworks consume oxygen – an elemental force of life and existence – they pose questions about energy, lifelessness, mark-making as meaning-making and what it is to be alive. These are questions the artist has returned to time and again.