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Date Created:
17/10/10

Description:
JOSHUA WEBB
APATHY FOR THE SETTING SUN
GALERIE DÜSSELDORF
10 April - 8 May 2011

THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS. 2010
30x30x85 cm (LxWxH)
Stonecast / carved books and concrete
$3500


As the revolution is fixed to its axis, the return
of the market is eminent. The law of motion
demands a diminishing cycle of revolutions,
limited by the friction that acts upon the return.
This Law of Diminishing Returns could be seen
as the alchemic price of utopia: the dramatic
consequence of the Soviet Union’s creating 
something (the Eutopia) from nothing (the void
that was the radical break from history). For any
alchemical equation, that which turns lead to
gold, the pursuit of eternal life or even utopia 
must carry the overbearing, sometimes even
apocalyptic, weight of its transaction. The price
of impossible exchange is the Devil; one/we
must not upset the natural order of things. For
instance, consider that gold is the physical
index against which all currency is measured.
When the production cycle of alchemic gold
exceeds its entropic equilibrium, the price of
gold plummets and leads to a global economic
crisis. Likewise, once the recipe for eternal life
goes public, the upward curve of population will
demand resources in excess of our planet’s
supply; the result being an endless existence
within a realized hell on earth. The alchemic
price of Communism’s Eutopia was its eventual
disappearance as Otherness within a totalizing
market system.