Joe Brittain
Proportionless Jewel & Studies

In the most conscientious of ways, Brittain works alongside his materials and guides them to enunciate their own properties. The results of his practice are behavioral situations in which matter performs its elemental tendencies: to rust, to evaporate, to cling, to expand. Brittain’s alchemy delivers to our human senses these mannerisms that might otherwise unfold only over geological intervals of time, or invisibly.

Proportionless Jewel gives form to Brittain’s adolescent barn hay hatch, the incidental oculus that bore the sudden and total appearance of many clear nights. In the series of studies, the constellations on these painted surfaces are thus not native to our skies ​but to memory. Their gables roof the columns, bestowing structure to an intimate conversation between the colossi of doubt and reassurance.

Proportionless Jewel, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, dopamine, salt, bleach, pure pigments, wood stain, Fantastik and moonshine on black cotton, 76 × 144 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #1, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, salt, bleach, pure pigments and wood stain on black cotton, 24 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #2, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, salt, bleach, pure pigments and wood stain on black cotton, 24 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #3, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, salt, bleach, pure pigments and wood stain on black cotton, 24 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #4, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, dopamine, salt, bleach, pure pigments, wood stain, Fantastik and moonshine on black cotton, 24 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #5, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, dopamine, salt, bleach, pure pigments, wood stain, Fantastik and moonshine on black cotton, 24 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #6, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, dopamine, salt, bleach, pure pigments, wood stain, Fantastik and moonshine on black cotton, 24 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #7, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, dopamine, salt, bleach, pure pigments, wood stain, Fantastik and moonshine on black cotton, 12 × 24 in

Study for Proportionless Jewel #8, 2015, copper sulfate, porcelain, dopamine, salt, bleach, pure pigments, wood stain, Fantastik and moonshine on black cotton