Joe Brittain
Frozen River

Frozen River is made from two petrified river bed stones (dug up near where I grew up), steel wire, and a 1931 printing of “Decline of the West” by Oswald Spangler. The rare book was chosen as this was the last printing of this book in Germany before Nazi control of the press. The book is a beautiful, though misguided examination of world culture and comes to the conclusion that western culture is at it’s end and a new era of democratically elected fascists will take over and divide the world. In many ways it predicted the results of the Russian revolution and the rise of figures like Hitler, Moussolini, and Franco. The process it describes is very similar to what we are seeing in America today. So the work is a kind of historic reminder.

While Spangler’s political history feels like a fossil to us today, it’s really just a blink of an eye geologically and is alive and well in our current world order. The stones hold the books to the wall, the stones are about 50 lb each and float above the viewer menacingly. A sort of “sword of Damacles”.

Untitled (Frozen River), 2017, petrified river bed stones, steel wire, 1931 printing of “Decline of the West” by Oswald Spangler
23 × 64 × 5 in

Untitled (Frozen River), 2017 (detail)