Immense heaps of coal, pumping machines, thundering sounds, and workers toiling in mine shafts: Cristina Lucas’s (1973, ES) new video, 4 FAIT/H BILL/BOARD, 2025, opens with imagery of the first of four industrial revolutions that have profoundly changed the world. The word revolution immediately brings to mind historical uprisings and struggles, a social-political context. For her fourth solo presentation in the gallery, Lucas returns to the original meaning of the word, derived from the Latin word volvere, which is in fact a technical term meaning ‘turning’ or ‘rolling’. In doing so, she aligns with science: in 1543, Copernicus used it in the title for his study of the revolutions of celestial bodies.

Four major technical-industrial revolutions form the starting point for the video work and a series of Compositions that Lucas shows in the exhibition 4 FAIT/H. From the invention of the steam engine to the all-pervasive power of AI: Lucas shows that technological progress has penetrated deeply into the capillaries of human existence. The spark of a revolution can be ignited by steam power, an optimized assembly line, the flickering of a light bulb, the energy of alternating current, data processing, silicon microchips, programming, robotics, the internet, big data or artificial intelligence. Each of these innovations has an impact on biodiversity, cultural and political thinking and on social structures and class inequality. They are interwoven in an inextricable chain of cause and effect.

Cristina Lucas is internationally regarded as a leading artist. Her work demonstrates a great social commitment and her intelligent reflections on the power relations that underlie (Western) culture provide compelling images. 4 FAIT/H BILL/BOARD, 2025 is a work that she herself describes as a crazy visual mix, a story that is actually so complex that it is almost impossible to decipher. Everything happens simultaneously, flowing and fusing into and through each other. The title is just as swirling and ambiguous as the video itself. It is a play with words and their various interpretations Faith means trust and refers to the positivist belief in progress, which she directly links to bill, which means both law and invoice. And the concept of board evokes associations with power, but is also about groups of people. The historical sources that Lucas used for the video have been manipulated with the help of AI. Lucas presents a hybrid composition of multiple elements. The film begins with technological shifts and follows how they expand into economic, social, political and intellectual domains, always provoking a response of social activism. This process unfolds as a continuum, stretching from the 18th to 21st century: a timelapse of the Anthropocene. The work culminates in an empowered society, a society that wants to be in harmony with the planet, with technology and with individual privacy.

Lucas’s work is a plea for a worldview in which there are no boundaries between the technological, the human, nature and the environment. The iron used in the production of cars is the same as the iron that gives our blood its red colour. The series of Compositions in the show reflect this idea of ​​elements connected in a constant flux: they are free explorations of form and each composition refers to one of the revolutions. For example, We Are the Robots (Kraftwerk), 2025 is a collection of colour planes made of nickel, manganese, cobalt and lithium, in which electronics are literally embodied, including the gold plating used for transmission. In 4 FAIT/H, Lucas presents us with a perspective that is as critical as it is disarming and hopeful, with images that are both disturbing and seductive.