DREAM DATE

BY: Sarah Sunday

What do you imagine to be your dream date? Do you picture yourself with a lover under the swaying fronds of palms, or reveling in a deep-dipping sunset? Or do you imagine, perhaps, something so fantastical you don’t dare to mention it aloud? Has your dream date ever occurred, or come even remotely close to occurring?

In a body of works that explores that tender, thin thread of space between dreams and reality, Joseph Desler Costa plays upon color, light, and the inner-workings of the mind in his exhibition entitled Dream Date. Touching upon deeply lodged insecurities — innate in each of our beings — Costa offers the opportunity to observe what those feelings might look like when portrayed in gradients of purple, orange, or blue.

At first glance, the images portrayed in Dream Date almost appear to be animations, as elements both bold and hazy meet in the middle. Costa photographs his image several times, laying one print over another, to create a stack of dreamy, translucent images which extend three-dimensionally past the canvas. Within the flashy symbols and dreamy shades, there is an element of youthfulness which draws upon all of the emotion one experiences in a tumultuous young summer.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Costa grew up in the late ’80s and blooming ’90s, a time when the internet had not yet become the giant that has housed itself in our society and everyday lives. Raised on MTV, grunge bands, and patterns that zig-zagged, squiggled, and popped to no end, Costa’s artwork seems to draw influences from his early upbringing. Additionally drawing inspiration from his fellow Pittsburgh-native, Andy Warhol, Costa similarly has centered his gaze upon consumerism, repetition, and art that lunges out of its canvas. Dream Date expertly peers into a place of fantastical inhibitions and longings, revealing the sensation of being caught half awake, and half asleep.

The exhibition will be taking place in ClampArt’s airy New York studio from March 5 to April 25, 2020.