© Joseph Desler Costa
As his new exhibition sits in quarantine at New York City’s ClampArt gallery, Joseph Desler Costa writes a letter to Humble’s editors about his experience in this uncertain time.
We at Humble are long time fans of Joseph Desler Costa’s work. I originally caught wind of it when he submitted to Radical Color, an exhibition I curated in 2015 at Portland Oregon’s sadly defunct Newspace Center for Photography. I was drawn to his dreamy, mysterious use of color and smart riffs on branding, cultural icons, and even (though he might not outwardly say it) references to stock photography.
I followed Costa’s work through his partnership with Foley Gallery and was eager to see (assuming I could travel to NYC) his latest solo exhibition at ClampArt this spring. Sadly, like so many 2020 photography exhibitions, his work hangs on ClampArt’s walls with no one to see it in real life.
In lieu of a Q+A about the exhibition, Costa shared the following letter with me about his life as an artist with a suspended exhibition in the time of COVID-19. We are publishing it below, unedited, alongside the images we wish we could see in person.
Costa will also be giving a virtual exhibition tour and discussion with Allen Frame and Stephen Frailey this Friday, April 24th at ClampArt . RSVP HERE for the Zoom link.
Joseph Desler Costa’s quarantined Dream Date exhibition at ClampArt
Dear Jon,
Re: Dream Date - interview
I’ve decided to write a letter of sorts regarding our plan for an interview and discussion of my current, and now suspended exhibition, Dream Date.
Maybe we could label this a “letter to the editor.” 🤔
If you’re going through anything similar to what I’m going through, and I’m guessing you most likely are, then the thought of looking critically at art, compiling or answering interview questions and even thinking intently, seems exhausting if not impossible.
Or even worse - useless.
As I’m writing this letter, it’s going on 4pm in Brooklyn and I’m still wearing my pajama pants. Somehow I did manage to change out of the top half. I had an SVA art class to teach—via Zoom of course—that forced me out of the pajama top but not the bottom half. Aside from the occasional trip to the grocery store, I’ve been at home for what feels like forever and also just yesterday.
Time has become weird. Working from home while being confined to home has made it hauntingly so. I have time to constantly check email. Binge watch television series. Open the refrigerator countless times. Find nothing I feel like eating. Time to help my 7 year old with his online homework. Time to realize I am depressingly bad at 2nd grade math. Time to play FIFA 2020. Time to not understand Minecraft. Time to lose my patience with my family. Time to cook and to drink too much. Time to make a plan to organize my closet.
And definitely too much time to read the news. I know I am lucky to have this time. I’m fortunate enough to continue my life, albeit confined, while being surrounded by abstract death and destruction. I’m fine but many are not.
© Joseph Desler Costa
I’m not handling this well. Sleeping is more difficult and feels more like resting my eyes. I’m used to the ebb and flow of uncertainty and financial stress that come with being an artist, but this type of uncertainty is different. I can’t see to the other side. Its dark, and I can’t imagine what it will look when we get there. So although I have more time, I feel less equipped than ever to understand time.
I have time to think about photography.
I worked for over a year and a half on my current exhibition and spent quite a large sum of money producing it. I truly care about it and might even consider it my strongest work to date. I also feel the need to say that my heart is broken by the fact that the show lasted just 7 days before being forced to close by the COVID crisis. I‘ve worked very hard for the small place I’ve found as an artist and photographer and I fear it may all have been for nothing.
Though as I write this, I also feel the need to make a disclaimer and acknowledge that my current situation is nothing compared to those who are sick, displaced, and suffering due to the virus; and of course I have no burden in comparison to the healthcare and essential workers taking care of us all.
In writing this, my intent was to talk about how even as the world is collapsing, even though the future is uncertain, even as our inept leader tries to divide us, and death and fear are everywhere— some how art and photography matter. But now, as I’m writing this, I’m not sure how to make that argument. I wonder if it’s because I suddenly can no longer believe what I’m seeing in the world or in pictures? Or is it that I’m more afraid of what the world (and art world) will look like when this crisis comes to an end?
What I do know from being confined, nervous and with too much time on my hands, is that it’s become easier to recognize and name what is special and what is dear to me.
Dream Date at its simplest, is about releasing otherwise unseen potential in objects and memories. It’s about making a picture that maybe no one else recognizes as significant and deciding it’s significant. Maybe this is what photography and art have always done. They decide what’s important, what can be special, and what has potential. Making these pictures allowed me to imagine and attempt to picture dream scenarios — my dream date, my idealized version of a thing, of anything, of a memory.
I have certain memories that won’t fade even though there may be nothing important about them. I remember watching my sister paint her fingernails. I remember how my uncle would hold a cigarette. It was ordinary. Banal. But for whatever reason it’s stuck in my memory. I remember my dad getting dressed for work, before he put his slacks on, wearing navy blue dress socks pulled up all the way up to his knees. I remember specific weather and generic but beautiful sunsets. I remember an apple tree and pink clouds. I remember album covers and tennis shoes. I remember graphics on a motorbike. I remember a red swimsuit. I remember the way my cousin’s motorcycle helmet smelled when I put it on.
If making images allows us to decide what’s important and what has potential, don’t they also allow us to decide what is possible? As we are constantly, and often oppressively presented with better versions of reality in our media feeds, we are also given the opportunity to believe and to have hope.
Dream Date is about memory and what’s been marked as important. But it’s also about how memories and desires that feel important have been influenced and even altered by a lifetime of looking at other people’s photographs. Glossy images absorbed from fashion magazines, Hollywood films, video games, the internet, other artists, influencers and so on and so on... Endless pictures have endless consequences on our imaginations and memories.
The works in Dream Date attempt to picture a balance between what I aspire to, what I wish for, what I remember and what actually happened. Yet as I make these pictures, they’re often warped by the pictures I’ve been digesting my whole life. Pictures that attempt and often succeed in telling me what I should wish for, aspire to, and spend my money on.
This might mean I’m making fictive pictures about an idealized version of reality or even a consumer dream. It may also mean I’m looking for a moment to look away. But, I guess at this point, in my pajama pants and in quarantine, an idealized reality or pause sounds wonderful. Believing in an ideal, or dare I say a consumerist dream, even if I can’t afford it, gives me hope, or at least an alternative to believe in. And right now, after weeks of stay-at-home orders and social distancing, I need an escape.