Joe Brittain “Past Tense”

Catinca Tabacaru

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Joe Brittain’s new works create situations and dialogs for us to probe our relationships to, and placements within the material world and its deep incomprehensible history.

Part historic, part scientific, part spiritual, the works are a continuation of Brittain’s exploration of natural, core materials; marble, black diamonds, fossilized stone, pure pigments, bone, crystal, and pure metals.

These materials, each with their own unique and complex roots, are brought together in focused, abstract forms. The works confound expectations and reveal an internal search for oneself and others.

One of the sculptures consists of two slabs of fossilized river bed, a sensual and liquid looking stone. They are lashed together around an original copy of Oswald Spangler’s seminal text The Decline of the West. Written between the two world wars in Germany, the book describes the breakdown of Western culture and the rise of fascism in a way that is chillingly applicable to today. Here the river of frozen time surrounds and makes inaccessible the the text and we are given sense of the impermanence of current events in the face of geological time.

Another sculpture consists of two 100 pound blocks of solid white marble; one block sits on top of the other but appears to float slightly. When looking closely, we see that within the space between the blocks, there are several, rough cut black diamonds. Here the white stone speaks to a long history of memorials and portraits stemming from the the ancient Roman and Greek world. The blocks are pure potentiality, a simple and raw material dug from the earth, enlivened and made unexpected by the insertion of an alien material that comes to earth inside comets and meteorites. The two play off each other and create a sort of book - a solid mass on concealment, with a hyper concentrated space of mystery hidden between it’s layers.